A man was found guilty on Friday of sexually abusing a 10-year-old girl who attended a day care that his wife ran in Owings Mills, allegations that led her to shoot him.

James Weems Jr., 59, of Towson, was convicted in Baltimore County Circuit Court of sexual abuse of a minor, rape and displaying obscene matter to a child. He drove the van for Lil Kidz Kastle Daycare Center and would pick up and drop off children.

The jury deliberated for more than five hours. Weems did not visibly react to the verdict.

Circuit Judge Michael J. Finifter ordered him to be held in the Baltimore County Detention Center without bail pending sentencing, which is tentatively set for Jan. 8, 2025.

Weems was accused of sexually abusing four children but only stood trial on the first 10 counts related to the girl. The state during the course of the court proceedings dropped four of those charges.

Prosecutors said after sentencing they will decide whether to proceed with the remaining counts.

“The jury made the appropriate decision in evaluating what happened to that little girl,” Assistant State’s Attorney Zarena Sita told reporters outside the Baltimore County Courts Building after the verdict. “And hopefully this is a message that when something like this happens, people will be held accountable.”

The girl, she said, is “incredibly brave.”

“I am absolutely in awe of her strength,” Sita said.

The allegations surfaced on July 2, 2022, when the girl’s loved ones caught her using her aunt’s iPad to watch pornography.

Four family members — including the girl’s mother, grandmother and aunt — testified that she told them that she learned about the website from the van driver at day care: “Mr. James.”

“She was hysterical. She was upset,” one relative said on the stand. “Shutting down.”

The relative then took the girl upstairs, where family members questioned her in more detail. Weems, she reported, showed her porn on his cellphone and sexually abused her in the van and at the day care.

The next day, family members called 911. The girl participated that night in a forensic interview at the Baltimore County Child Advocacy Center. She’s now 12.

Baltimore County Police Detective Scott Kilpatrick obtained search and seizure warrants for Weems’ phone and Google account.

Later, FBI Special Agent Michael Fowler analyzed and mapped the data, revealing a consistent pattern that Weems searched and accessed porn sites on his phone near elementary schools.

Weems’ now-ex-wife, Shanteari, testified that her husband viewed the girl as his “little buddy.” The girl also took the stand and held onto a teddy bear for comfort.

Testifying in his own defense, Weems admitted that he watched porn on his phone in the van while he waited to pick up children. But he said he took precautions to shield them from the sexually explicit material.

At the same time, Weems acknowledged that the girl could have looked over his shoulder. He said he would pull up FlightAware when a plane was flying overhead and hand his phone to the children.

Weems suggested that they could’ve pulled up the videos without his knowledge.

“They can hide it,” he testified. “Kids sometimes hide things.”

Deputy State’s Attorney Lisa Dever said Weems took “small, slow, progressive steps” to ensnare the girl in his web, including giving her snacks.

The girl, she said, was easily influenced, immature and developmentally disabled. She was “the perfect choice,” Dever said.

”Many parents warn their children to beware of strangers. We call that stranger danger,” she said in her closing argument. “The reality is the person who’s going to hurt your child is not going to be a stranger.”

Thomas Pavlinic, Weems’ lead attorney, said the allegations against his client defied credibility and logic.

The van, he said, was filled with children. Meanwhile, there were teachers and aides at the day care.

“How does an innocent man come to court and try to prove a negative?” Pavlinic said. “We can’t prove a negative. They must prove a positive.”

The jury, he said, could infer that the girl saw porn on his client’s phone. But Pavlinic said prosecutors had to prove that Weems intentionally showed her obscene material for that to be a crime.

Pavlinic said he has sympathy for the girl, adding that he believed that she is a victim of the system. He also noted that his client honorably served in the Marine Corps and worked for the Baltimore Police Department.

The jury did not hear about the allegations from the three other children or what happened after the accusations came to light.

On July 21, 2022, Shanteari Weems drove from Baltimore County to Washington, D.C., to confront her husband inside his hotel room at what was then called the Mandarin Oriental and shot him two times. She later divorced him.

Shanteari Weems pleaded guilty in D.C. Superior Court to aggravated assault and carrying a pistol without a license and was sentenced to four years in prison — plus two years’ supervised release. She testified in street clothes, and jurors did not hear about her arrest, conviction and imprisonment.

According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, she’s set to be released on Dec. 17, 2025. He faces a mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years in prison without the possibility of parole.