Detective Testifies on Destruction of Murder Weapon  

By Cooper Griffiths [former] - October 7, 2022
Court | Daily Stories | Homicides | Shooting | Suspects | Victims |

During an Oct. 6 motion hearing, a detective from the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) was questioned on the destruction of a murder weapon in a 2017 homicide case. 

Robert Moses and James Mayfield, 23, are charged with first-degree murder while armed, assault with the intent to kill while armed and aggravated assault while armed for allegedly shooting 17-year-old Jamahri Sydnor and wounding three other bystanders on Aug. 10, 2017, on the 1400 block of Saratoga Avenue, NE. 

Moses, 22, was also charged with obstructing justice and committing offenses while on release for an unrelated gun charge.

 The detective said one of the murder weapons was recovered at the scene, while the other was recovered in 2018, a year after the crime occurred, in a trap house. The weapon was then brought to the Prince George’s County Police Department where he testified that they didn’t do immediate testing for DNA due to the gun being found at a “trap house.” 

 He said the weapon could have been heavily contaminated with others DNA and would not be significant.  

The detective also said he wasn’t made aware that the .40 caliber handgun was transferred to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and destroyed. 

Mayfield’s defense attorney, Veronice Holt, said she wanted to understand why there was so much confusion over the alleged murder weapon between the MPD, Prince George’s County Police Department, and the ATF. 

“Not one effort was made, including prosecutors” Holt said. 

On Oct. 5, D.C. Witness reported that a MPD detective said the gun was originally held in Prince George’s County’s custody as evidence for a 2016 investigation of an illegal gun purchase. 

Although officials initially suspected the gun was linked to Sydnor’s homicide’s back in August 2017, the connection was confirmed through a federal ballistics database that identified a match between the casings fired by the gun and the bullet which killed Sydnor. 

Through a series of emails, the detective was aware of that the gun was a murder weapon, which a forensic examiner soon confirmed. At that time, the gun was transferred to the ATF Task Force’s vault. 

In 2019, the defendant in the Prince George’s County investigation pleaded guilty. After his sentence, the prosecution’s office filed a motion asking the court to forfeit all property related to the case, including the gun. The officer asked the ATF to schedule the gun’s destruction for the “near future” as this would make “much more room in the vault.”

Per the request, the detective switched the gun’s status from “evidence” to “seized judicially” in the ATF database, which prompted officials to formally approve the gun’s destruction. However, the MPD was not copied in these emails and not updated when the gun was destroyed in August 2019.

DC Superior Judge Maribeth Raffinan continued the hearing for Oct. 11 to resolve trial readiness issues. July selection is slated to begin on Oct. 12.