ALLENTOWN, Pa. — A Bath man was sentenced Tuesday to 15 to 30 years in state prison for his role in the 2022 ambush shooting that killed 22-year-old Najeer Lane, the Lehigh County District Attorney’s Office said.
Frederick Antwan Marks Jr., 26, is the last of three men charged in Lane’s death to be sentenced. Prosecutors say 13 shots were fired at the car Lane was riding in, all in about one second, from a handgun rigged to fire automatically.
Marks took a plea deal and pleaded guilty Aug. 25 to third-degree murder and conspiracy, court records show. Prosecutors withdrew his other charges in the killing, including criminal homicide and two counts of attempted homicide. Judge Thomas M. Caffrey also ordered 10 years of probation after Marks’ release.
Marks also pleaded guilty to aggravated assault in a separate case stemming from a June 21, 2022, shooting in Allentown and received 5 to 20 years. Caffrey ordered all his prison terms to be served at the same time, records show.
According to the DA’s office, Marks and his co-defendants agreed to meet Bless Jones at Trout Creek Park on Aug. 31, 2022, then ambushed him on the way there. Lane was a passenger in the car Jones was driving. The shooting happened late that night on Juniata Street in south Allentown.
Lane, shot in the back, died at the scene. Jones escaped and drove home. Less than an hour later, the attackers showed up there and fired 12 more shots at Jones and another person, missing both, the office said.
The gun used in the ambush was fitted with a Glock switch, a device that turns a semi-automatic handgun into a fully automatic one, according to the office.
The DA’s office described Marks’ conspiracy charge as conspiracy to commit third-degree murder. Court records show prosecutors changed it the day of the plea to conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. Marks received 10 to 20 years on that count.
Co-defendant Legious Robert Minder Jr. of Bethlehem pleaded guilty Oct. 14, 2024, and is serving 40 to 80 years for Lane’s death and three other cases. One was the same June 2022 shooting, which injured a man, according to court records and the DA’s office. Records show Caffrey denied Minder’s request to take back his plea in March 2025.
A jury convicted Xavier Grenon in February of conspiracy to commit homicide, attempted homicide, and aggravated assault. He was sentenced in April to 18 years and 9 months to 40 years.
Lane had survived a shooting in 2019, and his brother, Parris Lane, was shot and killed in a Center City Allentown parking lot in 2017, WFMZ reported after Lane’s death.