Alphonzo Epps. Glenn Bailey. George White. Garrett White. Lamont Warren. Charles Hicks.
Each of these men were killed in stabbings in DC since May 1.
While gun violence is the predominate cause of homicide in DC, since May the rate of homicides by stabbing has spiked to one in three. Of 18 homicides since May 1, six were stabbings.
Only three fatal stabbings were reported in the District between January and the end of April, a period that recorded 33 homicides.
Stabbing victims in the past two months have also skewed slightly older than other homicide victims in DC this year. While the average age of other victims is roughly 29 years old, the average age of the victims of fatal stabbings in the past two months has been 38.
Explore more DC homicide data in the spreadsheets below.
Bloggers at watchdog site Who Murdered Robert Wone are reporting that a settlement has been reached in a wrongful death lawsuit brought against the men police suspected of killing Wone, a DC attorney.
This tip comes just one day after a private mediation session held with retired Judge Howard Chasanow yesterday, instead of the earlier June 14th mediation lifted by Judge Michael Rankin. Arguments in the case were slate for later this October.
Kathy Wone originally brought the $20 million dollar wrongful death suit on November 25, 2008, around the same time the U.S. Attorney’s Office filed criminal charges of evidence tampering, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy first against Ward, and later with his two Swann Street house-mates.
As the folks at WMRW point out, in June of last year, Joe Price, Victor Zaborsky and Dylan Ward were found not guilty in all charges relating to Wone’s death.
UPDATED: USAO corrected the second paragraph of the release with the correct sentencing date.
Kerstan Leonard has been convicted of first-degree murder in the shooting death of Melody Williams at an apartment complex in Southeast DC, the US Attorney’s Office announced this afternoon.
A press release from the USAO is after the jump.
Read more
Since Homicide Watch first started reporting homicides in DC, six defendants have been under the age of 18 at the time of their arrest. Only one has been tried as a juvenile. Now, a Cambridge University professor says that not only should the other five be kept out of the adult criminal justice system, anyone under age 30 shouldn’t be tried, or sentenced, as adults, either.
At the National Institute of Justice’s annual convention today Professor David Farrington suggested that youthful offenders, up to age 25, did not belong in the U.S.’s general population for criminal justice services.
Citing a study funded by NIJ in 2008, the results of which are expected to be published soon, Farrington said he and his colleagues had determined that because young people’s brains aren’t fully developed until they reach young adulthood they don’t have full control over their impulses and thus are more likely than adults to break the law, act out and engage in delinquency. Young people exhibiting those behaviors are likely to benefit from treatment outside of the adult criminal justice population, Farrington said.
Brain development should be of particular concern to those working with delinquents and crime-prone populations because stress factors, including living in high crime area, can delay a person’s brain development even more, Farrington said.
His recommendation? Different treatment and punishment for offenders aged 29 and under.
Homicide Watch is currently tracking the cases of 49 DC murder defendants arrested since October 2010.
Of those defendants:
- 34 are 29 years old or younger
- 16 are age 21 or younger
- 6 are age 18 or younger
- Only one defendant of the 49 has been tried as a juvenile.
Where do these young people belong? In the adult criminal justice system? The juvenile system? Or somewhere else entirely?
From the US Attorney’s Office:
Two Men Convicted of Killing a Man and Wounding a Child In December 2008 Home Invasion in Northwest Washington - Third Defendant Convicted of Obstructing Justice, Perjury -
WASHINGTON- Allen Butler, 33, and Steven Lewis 30, both of Washington, D.C., were convicted by a jury today of second degree murder while armed, assault with intent to kill while armed, and other charges stemming from a home invasion in December 2008 in which a man was killed and a five-year-old boy was wounded, U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. announced.
A third defendant, Tawanda Sheffield, 33, also of Washington, D.C., was convicted by the same jury of two counts of obstruction of justice and one count of perjury as a result of her having lied to police and a grand jury in an effort to fabricate an alibi for Butler’s whereabouts at the time of the home invasion.
The verdicts followed a three-week trial in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. The Honorable William M. Jackson, who presided at the trial, scheduled sentencing for all three defendants on September 9, 2011.
Read more
The Washington Post’s Matt Zapotosky looks at Prince George’s County violent crime spike and the unique appeal authorities are making to those convicted of violent crime.
Thirty-four of Prince George’s County’s most dangerous criminals sat side-by-side in black upholstered chairs at a Suitland health center one recent evening, staring suspiciously at the police commanders, prosecutors and community activists in front of them.
The murderers, robbers and carjackers had been forced to come to the meeting by their parole and probation agents. All are considered likely to strike again.
Officers will be watching closely this summer, police told the group. Those in the room who don’t stay out of trouble will go to prison.
Read the full story on the Washington Post’s website here.
Also, be sure to check out their map of PG County homicides.
For more on PG County homicides, see Gory Prince George’s.
MPD sometimes issues posters with important information about homicides, including a victim’s photo, contact information for the detective assigned to the case and how to get in touch with MPD if you have information that may help the investigation.
A gallery of this year’s posters is after the jump. Click an image to launch a slideshow.
Read more
MPD’s reassignment of police districts and boundaries is well underway, with two community meetings already held and five more planned.
Police districts and police service areas are periodically reassigned to reflect the changing populations and service needs. MPD’s last district reassignment took place in 2004.
Explained MPD:
With increasing business and residential development, and the thriving tourist and entertainment areas throughout the city, workload in the police districts has shifted significantly since the last boundary realignment. In order to equalize workload, provide the highest level of police service to all areas of the city, and ensure the safety of law enforcement officers, in 2011 MPD will realign police boundaries. The plan is based on an evaluation of crime, calls for service, development and road construction plans, community concerns, and other factors.
What does all this mean? DC residents may soon find themselves assigned to a different police district than the one they were assigned to at the start of the year.
Police Districts and PSAs also are important when we look at— and especially when we compare— crime statistics. Every year reporters and residents want to know which districts and which PSAs saw the most robberies, sexual assaults and homicides. Those numbers help tell us about our neighborhoods… who is safe and who is in danger, when and where.Read more
Here at Homicide Watch we’ve been busy working behind the scenes on a relaunch of the site. You saw the first public roll out of that this week with the new comments system. More changes and features (all positive, we hope!) will be appearing over the next few weeks.
Part of what we’ve done to prepare for the changes is go through our data, clean it up and start to fill in the holes. To that end, I’ve cleaned up our Google spreadsheet of suspects. There were several court appearances today, so there are several updates that are already due, but I wanted to share the sheet with you sooner rather than later. It’s a resource that we rely on here to do a lot of reporting, and that means it should be in your hands, too.
A small version of the spreadsheet is below. On it you’ll find the names of those arrested on murder charges in 2011 (and some 2010 cases, too). The spreadsheet records the defendant’s date of birth, next court appearance, purpose of that court appearance, custody status, race and gender. Information comes from DC Superior Court and VineLink.
Click on the spreadsheet for a larger view of it.
Reach Homicide Watch at HomicideWatchDC {AT} gmail {DOT} com.
Since this site launched last year, comments have been a critical part of what makes Homicide Watch D.C. work, and our dedicated commenters have been a critical part of the community we’ve built here.
We just added an upgrade to the way comments work. We’re now using the Disqus platform, which should give everyone more ways to find and promote the best comments. You can, for instance:
- Like a comment (and see what comments others like)
- Sign in with Facebook, Twitter or other identities you already have (though you can still comment anonymously)
- Upload an image. We’re especially excited about the possibilities of this.
- Share your comments automatically on Facebook and Twitter (but only if you want).
At the moment, we’re waiting for our old comments to migrate to the new system—all 1,097 of them. Any comments you’ve left are still there and will be public again soon. (Of course, there could be other bugs. Email us if you find those: homicidewatchdc [at] gmail.com).
This is the first part of a larger upgrade and redesign you’ll be seeing soon at Homicide Watch, which will give us more tools to tell a more complete story of violent crime in the District. More details on that soon.
As always, we welcome your comments.
