The young men were enjoying themselves, drinking Hennessy and smoking marijuana in a Dorchester hotel room early on Oct. 17 when someone made a joke that set a tragedy in motion.
A comment from Joshua Briggs, 22, enraged John “Spice” Collins, prompting a melee in Room 525 of the Holiday Inn Express that ultimately led to Briggs being fatally shot in the neck, Assistant District Attorney Thomas Flanagan said Wednesday in Suffolk Superior Court.
He spoke during the arraignment of Collins and Michael “Bats” Reynolds, both 24, and Erinn “Dubdub” Crawford Jr., 29, who are each charged with first-degree murder in Briggs’s slaying.
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A fourth defendant, 26-year-old James “Shizz” Coleman Jr., who also goes by “Crazy James,” will be arraigned for the killing on Friday, according to prosecutors and court records.
The defendants remained out of public view Wednesday and shouted not-guilty pleas from an adjoining hallway, as Briggs’s relatives looked on sternly from the spectators’ gallery. One woman wiped away tears.
Collins, Reynolds, and Crawford were held without bail.
“There is ample evidence to support the murder charges against all four codefendants,” Flanagan said, citing witness statements and video surveillance footage from the hotel on Boston Street.
Flanagan said Briggs and two other people were staying in Room 525 on the night of Oct. 16, and the group posted photos of themselves posing with two guns via the online application Snapchat.
Coleman, Collins, Crawford, and another man and woman later joined the gathering, where liquor and pot were consumed without incident until around 2:30 a.m., prosecutors said.
That’s when Collins “threw a punch” at Briggs over a perceived slight, and Briggs protested that he was “only joking” about an earlier comment, Flanagan said.
“Spice would not accept that,” he said, using Collins’s nickname.
Witnesses indicated that Collins charged at Briggs a second time, and Briggs “got the better” of him before they were separated and hotel staff ordered Collins’s group to leave, Flanagan said.
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He said the four defendants and a fifth man, whom police are still trying to identify, returned to the hotel room shortly after 4 a.m. The fifth suspect remains at large and is believed to go by the name Randy, officials said.
“The group of five intruders allegedly burst through the door with multiple firearms being brandished and pointed at the victims,” Flanagan wrote in a statement filed with the court.
“They all rushed in and they were demanding” the firearms that Briggs’s group had, Flanagan said in court.
Reynolds, he said, pointed his gun at the face of one of Briggs’s associates and ordered that man to “run his pockets.” The man handed over cash and jewelry. Reynolds’s firearm was a black gun with a laser sight attached to it “for aiming purposes,” Flanagan said.
A witness said Collins darted over to Briggs, pointing a gun at him and demanding to know where the other firearms were in the room, Flanagan said.
Briggs said there were no guns, and seconds later, a single shot was fired that struck him in the neck, Flanagan said.
Briggs was pronounced dead at the scene.
Travis Andersen can be reached at travis.andersen@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @TAGlobe.