A meeting for parents of homicide victims is planned for Thursday evening in Northwest D.C., said Kenny Barnes of the Homicide Prevention Task Force.
Organizers hope to form a “speakers bureau” of homicide victims’ friends and family.
Said Barnes,
Those of us who have been affected by the worst tragedy that can befall a parent, family member, or friend, it is time for us to organize collectively together and speak in one voice, not try to fight individual battles, not just for ourselves and our lost family members but to collectively strategize and work together to prevent the same tragedy that has befallen us not happening again and again to other families like ours.
An annual report by the FBI released today shows the use of firearms in murders and nonnegligent manslaughters in the District to be slightly higher than the national average.
Of the 132 reported homicides in the District in 2010, firearms were used in 99 of them, or approximately 75 percent. Nationally, firearms were used in 67.5 percent of homicides in 2010, the FBI reported. Read more
Police took one man into custody near the scene. The victim and attacker apparently knew each other, said a police source, who declined to be named because the investigation is ongoing.
This is what Curtis Weeks could have been. But he was 16-years-old when he was arrested on suspicion of felony murder while armed. And today, at 18, he received his sentence. Forty years incarceration for the shooting death of Reggie Cook.
“He is a teenager like many other teenagers,” said Weeks’s attorney Maria Hawilo. And those professions reflect things Weeks likes to do, she said. Read more
While D.C. was hunkered down with Hurricane Irene, the team at Homicide Watch was putting the finishing touches on a project that we’ve been working on for quite some time.
Today we’re pleased to introduce the new Homicide Watch D.C.
You’ll still find all the news and information you counted on us for before. But our new database-driven site brings more depth, and we hope more context, to our reporting.
In the two-minute video below we take you on a short tour of some of the new features.
Cousins Found Guilty of First Degree Murder While Armed, Other Charges in 2008 Slaying in Northwest Washington - Defendants Believed Victim Had Killed Family Member -
WASHINGTON - Gary Dickens, 41, and, his cousin, Antwarn “Tony” Fenner, 37, were convicted by a jury today of murder and conspiracy charges in the slaying of a man they believed had killed one of their family members, U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. announced.
Dickens, formerly of Bowie, Md., and Fenner, formerly of Hyattsville, Md., were convicted following a trial in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. The Honorable Jennifer M. Anderson, who presided at trial, set sentencing for December 5, 2011. The defendants face a statutory maximum term of life imprisonment. Read more
On the day he was to go to trial for first-degree murder this week, Samson Alemayhu instead pleaded guilty, admitting that he killed Assefaw Hagos in a fatal stabbing in May 2010 outside an Ethiopian restaurant in Northwest DC.
The charge was dropped to second-degree murder while armed in the plea agreement. The case was scheduled to go to trial Monday. Read more
Allen Verter Jr. was arrested Friday afternoon in connection with the fatal shooting of Dawan Anthony Felder in May 2010.
Darnell Hawkins was indicted on a charge of first-degree murder in the case in June. He pleaded innocent. A jury trial is scheduled for June 2012.
From MPD:
August 12, 2011
Additional Arrest in Homicide: 5000 Block of D Street, SE
(Washington, DC)- Detectives assigned to the Metropolitan Police Department’s Homicide Branch announced that an arrest has been made in the homicide of 28-year-old Dawan Anthony Felder.
On Saturday, May 16, 2010, at approximately 2:20 am, units from the Sixth District were dispatched to the 5000 block of D Street, SE, to investigate the report of sounds of gunshots. Upon arrival, they located the victim lying on the sidewalk suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. DC Fire and Emergency Medical Services responded to the scene and found the victim unconscious, unresponsive, and with no vital signs consistent with life. Subsequently, the victim, identified as 28-year-old Dawan Anthony Felder of Clinton, Maryland, was pronounced dead by a member of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. Read more
A Hyattsville, MD man was arrested yesterday in connection with the February 2010 shooting death of Michaeldeon Talley.
Musonda Mulenga, 25, is suspected of First Degree Murder. He is scheduled to be presented with the charge today.
Mulenga is the second person arrested in the case. Twenty one-year-old Latonya Hall pleaded guilty to felony murder in the case. She’s due back in court Oct. 20.
Homicide Watch is a community-driven reporting project covering every murder in the District of Columbia. Using original reporting, court documents, social media, and the help of victims’ and suspects’ friends, family, neighbors and others, we cover every homicide from crime to conviction. Read more…
