The Washington Blade has a story on Gordon Rivers shooting death in Southeast DC in January 2010.
Says the Blade,
The United States Attorney’s office this week reversed an earlier decision to seal court records showing the outcome of its case against two young men charged with first-degree murder while armed for the January 2010 shooting death of gay Maryland resident Gordon Rivers in Southeast Washington.
At the request of the U.S. Attorney’s office, a D.C. Superior Court judge on Wednesday unsealed records showing that District resident William X. Wren, 18, had been sentenced on Jan. 26 to 12 years in prison after pleading guilty to shooting Rivers five times at point-blank range inside Rivers’ car during a botched robbery.
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A northwest Washington D.C. man has pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter for the death of 48-year-old Tyrone Smith last June in Peworth.
Anthony Anderson entered his plea on Monday.
Prosecutors alleged that Anderson gave Smith money to purchase cocaine, then became angry and accused Smith of stealing money from him. Anderson punched Smith, striking him in the face and Smith fell backward and struck his head on concrete, the government’s proffer of evidence states.
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A man accused of killing 19 year-old Sean Robinson in what police believe was a gang-related shooting in Adams Morgan, has pleaded innocent to charges of murder and attempted murder stemming from the August 2010 homicide.
Robert Givens, 18, was indicted on a charge of first degree murder by a grand jury on April 29. The indictment alleges that Given “while armed with a firearm, purposely and with deliberate and premeditated malice, killed Sean Robinson by shooting him with a firearm on or about August 11, 2010.”
Givens, known as “Chop,” is also charged with two counts attempted murder for assaulting two other people that same night: “T.B’ and “M.W.”
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Jessica Taylor was a 20-year-old sex worker when she was reported missing in D.C. in July 2003. Days later her body was found dismembered in New York, her head, hands and forearm missing.
Now Suffolk County authorities say those body parts have been found, reports Newsday.
On Monday, Suffolk County District Attorney said Taylor’s remains are among four sets of remains found at Long Island’s Gilgo Beach in December.
Karen Frantz, American University journalism grad student and freelancer extraordinaire, will be taking over Homicide Watch one week from right now. Why? Because I’ll be in California at Knight’s News Entrepreneurs Bootcamp.
Which means that for 12 days, Karen will be mining the DC homicide world for news tips and stories. She has court dates to go to and breaking news to report. As a professional thank-you, I’m paying her $250, but she’s worth so much more.
So I’m asking you to…
Use the yellow PayPal button on the center sidebar to make a donation to Homicide Watch D.C.’s freelancer fund. We want to raise $250 more for Karen, and we’re about $75 from that goal.
Read more about the Help Pay Karen campaign here.
Brian Scott and Bryant Morillo were D.C.’s first murder victims of 2011. Scott was 21; Morillo, 16.
This year has been especially dangerous for people in that age group in D.C. While there were about as many homicide victims in the first four months of 2011 as the same period last year, a much larger proportion have been 21 years old and younger.
According to Homicide Watch D.C.’s data, between January and April of 2011, 12 people 21 and under were killed in 12 separate incidents. In the first four months of 2010, nine youths were killed in six separate incidents.
An interactive timeline, posted below, shows an uptick in homicide victims 21 and younger. In 2010, youths 21 and under made up 16 percent of all homicide victims. So far this year, they make up 36 percent.
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The Post’s Courtland Milloy asks in his column today, “What does bin Laden’s slaying teach kids?”
He takes that question to young people in Southeast D.C.
Here’s what they said:
“You get on the wrong side of the wrong people, you reap what you sow.”
“People who kill innocent bystanders during drive-by shootings are no different from people who operate drones that do fly-by bombings and kill innocent people. If one is wrong, then all are wrong.”
“They can catch and kill bin Laden after 10 years, thousands of miles away, but we have hundreds of unsolved murders right in the midst of all these police and they just call ours ‘cold cases’ after a few months.”
“They can find billions of dollars to build schools and homes and give people jobs in Iraq and Afghanistan. All they do around here is tear things down, move us into neighborhoods where people are beefing and put up expensive condos where we used to live.”
From the U.S. Attorney’s Office:
Man Sentenced to 50 Years in Prison For the Shooting Death of a Good Samaritan - Teenage Victim Tried to Stop a Robbery -
WASHINGTON – Deangelo Foote, 21, was sentenced today to 50 years of incarceration on charges stemming from the retaliatory killing of a teenager who tried to stop him from robbing another person on the street, U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. announced.
Foote, of Washington, D.C., was convicted by a jury in February 2011 of first degree premeditated murder and various firearms offenses, following a trial in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. He was sentenced by the Honorable Russell F. Canan.
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From the U.S. Attorney’s Office:
Woman Sentenced to 55 Years in Prison In Slaying of Her Seven-Year-Old Daughte- Defendant Stabbed Child, Then Set House on Fire -
WASHINGTON - Carlese Hall, 31, of Washington, D.C., was sentenced today to 55 years in prison on charges stemming from the slaying in December 2008 of her seven-year-old daughter, U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. announced.
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Eighteen-year-old Rapheal Briscoe was killed yesterday in Southeast D.C. when he pulled a BB gun resembling a .45 caliber semiautomatic handgun on police.
Briscoe is the third citizen to be killed by police in D.C. this year. What’s troubling about these cases is that there are no easy answers.
According to media reports and MPD’s press release, officers from a gun recovery unit “encountered” Briscoe in the 2400 block of Elvans Road SE at about 2:30 Tuesday afternoon. While WUSA reports that Briscoe “confronted” the officers, ABC7 reports that officers “confronted” Briscoe. The Washington Post reports:
Police sources said the gun unit officers saw the young man walking on Stanton Road near Elvans. Spotting a bulge in his waistband, they asked from their unmarked vehicle to talk to him. He began walking rapidly and then to run as the officers continued to try to get his attention, the sources said. He turned onto Elvans.
As police pursued, in the vehicle and on foot, the young man reached into his waistband and pulled out what appeared to be a gun, the sources said. They said an officer fired twice.
Why was Briscoe carrying a BB gun that looked so real, an officer couldn’t tell the difference between it and a handgun? Why did officers pursue him? And why did he flee? Finally, why did the officer shoot?
The tragedy of Briscoe’s death is that for the community, and particularly those who knew Briscoe, there may be no apparent way to “resolve” the loss of his life.
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