Metropolitan Police Department detectives are investigating a homicide that occurred on Nov. 15, on the 2500 block of Southern Avenue, SE.
According to a press release, at about 5:25 am, officers located 32-year-old Kelvin Blowe suffering an apparent gunshot wound. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
DC Superior Court Judge Michael Ryan resumed jury deliberations on Nov. 15 following a delay due to a juror reporting that he was ill.
Rakeem Willis, 31, is charged with three counts of first-degree murder and fleeing a law enforcement officer, among other charges, in relation to the shooting deaths of 26-year-old Javon Abney, 26-year-old Sean Shuler, and 24-year-old Tyrik Hagood on Jan. 26, 2019, on the 1500 block of Fort Davis Place, SE.
Parties are expected to reconvene on Nov. 16 as jurors continue to deliberate on the case.
During a Nov. 14 jury trial, prosecutors presented clothing worn by a co-defendant to the jury, and a witness requested to end his testimony in a 2017 murder case.
On Aug. 10, 2017, Robert Moses, 23 and James Mayfield, 22, approached the intersection of Montana and Saratoga Avenues, NE while armed with .40 and .45 caliber handguns. Collectively, the defendants fired over ten rounds at people standing on Saratoga Avenue. One of the bullets struck 17-year-old Jamahri Sydnor in the head as she was driving, killing her.
Three other bystanders were also struck and injured by stray bullets.
Moses, 23, was arrested on Aug. 10, 2017, while Mayfield, 22, was arrested on Dec. 28, 2017. They are charged with more than a dozen counts each, including first-degree murder while armed, assault with the intent to kill and possession of a firearm during a crime of violence.
A man who was injured during the Aug. 10 shootings said, when he heard gunshots near the Montana and Saratoga Avenue intersection, he promptly jumped out of his wheelchair. His leg then gave out, causing him to fracture his right hip and leg.
The man was already partly paralyzed and rendered wheelchair-bound from having been previously shot in his back.
The witness recalled that when he fell, he “felt a bone break… a sharp, shooting pain running up and down my leg… starting from my hip going all the way down.” He added that because he was in a state of shock and panic from his injury, he couldn’t see any shooters, nor any other victims, nor anyone else running around.
The prosecutor asked the witness a series of questions to discern his state at the time, then played recordings of initial Grand Jury testimony from 2017 for reference.
The witness recalled that during his testimony, he was “just trying to go” and “never wanted to be there.” To expedite the process, he admitted to tailoring some responses so there would be fewer follow-up questions. He denied being under the influence of any substances at the time, but later clarified that “of course he was using drugs.”
The witness, who has a prior criminal record, said he was under the impression that the only answers that mattered were those directly relevant to the homicide case at hand, never expecting that “anything could be used against him.”
When the prosecutor began asking him questions about his initial call to 911 in order to verify select details, he refused to answer, yelling “now you’re making me feel like a criminal. I ain’t answering any more of your questions.”
The witness was excused to consult with his lawyer regarding how to proceed.
The prosecution also called a custodian of records with experience reviewing and authenticating stored data records for Instagram and Facebook accounts.
After being shown records from an Instagram account, the witness identified that the account’s username had been changed at least five times between September and October 2017 but never by the account’s actual owner.
The witness also noted that the account owner never verified the account with their listed phone number.
The prosecution also called a member of the Metropolitan Police Department’s Internal Affairs Bureau and showed surveillance footage of Mayfield directly following his arrest in December 2017.
The footage highlighted Mayfield’s slim physique. Prosecutors further emphasized this by displaying to jurors the child’s-sized black shirt Mayfield wore in the video.
DC Superior Court Judge Maribeth Raffinan scheduled the trial to continue on Nov. 15.
During a Nov. 15 hearing, prosecutors anticipated how long it would take for the defense to receive completed results from their independent DNA testing
A DC man, 35, is charged with first-degree sex abuse while armed and has been found guilty of sex abuse against two or more victims.
According to court documents, the first assault took place on July. 5, 2011, on the 900 block of Sheppard Street, NW. The second on Sept. 3, 2011, on 13th Street, NW and Monroe Street, NW.
The prosecution mentioned that two different shipments of DNA evidence were sent to defense attorney Kevann Gardner one being a perp kit and the other being extracts and cutting.
Defense attorney Kevann Gardner confirmed that he received the correct evidence sometime last week and testing would resume sometime in February.
The prosecution may also need to do additional testing.
No motions have been set.
The next hearing is scheduled for Jan. 13
DC Superior Court Judge Maribeth Raffinan held a status hearing on Nov. 15 for a homicide defendant who decided to waive his right to DNA testing after being provided with all the evidence that was found in relation to the crime in 2015.
Oscar Ramos, who was arrested when he was 32-years-old, is charged with first-degree murder while armed, assault with the intent to kill while armed, and two counts of possession of a firearm during a crime of violence for allegedly shooting two victims on May 28, 2015, on Interstate 295 at Exit 1 in Southwest DC.
One of the victims, 50-year-old Pedro Alvarado, was pronounced dead at the scene. The other victim was treated for life-threatening injuries at a local hospital.
Police suspect the motive was road rage.
Ramos was arrested and charged for the crime in 2022, nearly 7 years later.
The next hearing will be held on Oct.26, 2023. The defendant is currently being held at the DC Jail.
Metropolitan Police Department detectives are investigating a homicide that occurred on Nov. 13, on the 100 block of 58th Street, SE.
According to a press release, at about 1:54 pm, officers located 19-year-old James Gillespie suffering from an apparent gunshot wound. He was pronounced dead at a local hospital.
Metropolitan Police Department detectives are asking for the public’s help in locating a vehicle in connection to a non-fatal shooting that occurred on Nov. 4, on the 2700 block of Bladesburg Road, NE.
According to a press release, at about 12:22 pm, officers located an adult male victim suffering from an apparent gunshot wound.
During a Nov. 14 trial, four witnesses testified on evidence presented to the jury.
Derek Turner, 31, is charged with first-degree murder while armed and conspiracy and Ronnika Jennings, 44, is charged with conspiracy in connection to the shooting of 28-year-old Andrew McPhatter on March 5, 2017, on the 3500 block of Wheeler Road, SE.
The third defendant, 33-year-old Duan Hill, is charged with conspiracy and obstruction of justice in this matter as well.
Turner is also charged with first-degree murder while armed for allegedly shooting 23-year-old Devin Hall on Jan. 7, 2017 on the 3500 block of 6th Street, SE.
The first witness, a Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) detective in the homicide unit, continued his testimony on the interview recording he conducted with Jennings that the prosecution presented on Nov. 10.
In the video, the witness threatens Jennings with polygraph tests and states, “you’re a tough lady” and he wishes “he could treat you bad,” but that she was too “stubborn.” Jennings willingly submits to the possibility of polygraph testing and willingly surrenders her phone as well.
Another MPD officer testified to the search and seizure he performed on Turner’s cell after a search warrant was filed to investigate Jennings’s involvement with the case. Inside the cell, the officer found several documents and a piece of paper with phone numbers scribbled on it and labeled “Fatz” stashed under Turner’s mattress.
An expert witness from T-Mobile appeared to confirm the records T-Mobile acquired and stored from Turner’s phone included calls and text messages to Jennings. The records reflected the same phone numbers that were scribbled on the piece of paper in Turner’s cell.
DC Superior Court Judge Marisa J. Demeo set the trial to continue on Nov. 15.
The prosecution expects to rest by the end of the day Tuesday.
Metropolitan Police Department detectives are asking for the public’s help in locating a suspect in connection to a stabbing that occurred on Nov. 4, on the 1700 block of Kalorama Street, NW.
According to a press release, at about 7:15 pm, officers located a female victim suffering from an apparent stab wound.
During a Nov. 10 hearing, two witnesses testified on evidence presented to the jury.
Derek Turner, 31, and Ronnika Jennings, 44, are charged with first-degree murder while armed and conspiracy in connection to the shooting of 28-year-old Andrew McPhatter on March 5, 2017 on the 3500 block of Wheeler Road, SE.
Jennings is also charged with assault with intent to kill and several counts of accessory of murder after the fact.
The third defendant, 33-year-old Duan Hill, is charged with conspiracy and obstruction of justice in this matter as well.
Turner is also charged with first-degree murder while armed for allegedly shooting 23-year-old Devin Hall on Jan. 7, 2017, on the 3500 block of 6th Street, SE.
A Special Agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) continued his testimony from the Nov. 9 trial.
The prosecution presented recordings from several calls Turner made to his former girlfriend as well as Jennings and his mother.
During cross-examination, Turner’s defense attorney Michael Madden questioned the witness’s familiarity with the DC Jail phone system. He also emphasized that the witness has no knowledge regarding how many other incarcerated individuals contacted the defendant’s ex-girlfriend.
A Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) detective in the homicide unit leading the Hall case testified to his interrogation of Jennings, who was a former employee of the MPD herself. Acting as a customer service representative, Jennings had access to the entire MPD database. The prosecutors in the case accused her of utilizing her access to the database in order to run the names for her co-conspirators and friends.
The prosecution presented a video recording of Jennings’s interrogation with the detective.
During his investigation, the witness testified to seeing Jenning’s name come up several times. After establishing Jenning’s as a common occurrence in the case, the witness decided to bring her in for questioning.
“You want to tell us how active you’ve been with Derek?” the detective asked in the video.
Jennings explained that “she doesn’t know Fats like that.” Fats is Turner’s nickname to which Jennings more commonly knew him by.
In the video, Jennings was very insistent that she did not know any more than what she was telling the detective.
In response, the detective told her, “I have nothing to lose. You have everything. You have mouths to feed… you have bills, you have everything.”
Similarly, while talking about Turner’s incarceration, the detective told Jennings “you might be sitting next to him.”
DC Superior Court Judge Marisa J. Demeo set the trial to continue on Nov. 14.
The prosecution expects to rest early next week.
After a juror reported he had fallen ill with the flu, DC Superior Court Judge Michael Ryan decided that the jury would not continue deliberations in a murder trial on Nov. 14.
Rakeem Willis, 31, is charged with three counts of first-degree murder and fleeing a law enforcement officer, among other charges, in relation to the shooting deaths of 26-year-old Javon Abney, 26-year-old Sean Shuler, and 24-year-old Tyrik Hagood on Jan. 26, 2019, on the 1500 block of Fort Davis Place, SE.
Arguments closed on Nov. 8, and the jury has been deliberating since. Early Monday morning, however, one juror called into the court to report he could not make it to the courthouse, because he was sick.
“Well, it was the easiest jury for awhile,” Judge Ryan joked. Now, he said, they had to determine whether the juror had come down with just the flu and not COVID-19, which the parties avoided naming.
“One person’s flu is another person’s… who knows,” Judge Ryan added, trailing off.
Defense attorney Howard McEachern suggested that the sick juror call in again in the afternoon, and again the next morning, to confirm it’s not something more serious. If he is able to return and no other jurors are sick, Judge Ryan said, the deliberations can resume Tuesday morning.
“We do have notes that bring the latter part of the week into concern, though,” Judge Ryan said. Several jurors had suggested that they had commitments on Thursday and could not deliberate on that day.
A co-defendant in the trial, 33-year-old Johnathan Winston, was acquitted of murder charges on Nov. 8 for lack of sufficient evidence. Willis could more firmly be pinned to the scene of the crime than Winston, using his cell phone records.
In closing arguments, McEachern asked the jury to consider testimony that suggested Willis didn’t know any of the victims and lacked motive. The prosecutor noted more than a dozen calls from Willis to Shuler that day that, he said, suggested otherwise.
The jury has, thus far, deliberated for more than two full days.
Parties are expected to reconvene on Nov. 15 as jurors continue to deliberate on the case.
The prosecution in a Nov. 10 murder trial brought out a Grand Jury transcript of a witness’s previous testimony when he described diving to the ground after hearing gunshots go off, despite his repeated insistence that he now remembers nothing about the incident.
On Aug. 10, 2017, according to court documents, around a dozen shots went off at the intersection of Saratoga and Montana Avenues, NE, one of which struck and killed 17-year-old Jamahri Sydnor. James Mayfield and Robert Moses, both 23, face 13 and 25 counts, respectively, including first-degree murder and charges for weapon possession among others in relation to the incident.
A long-time native of the Saratoga neighborhood, who had returned on Aug. 10, 2017, to help out his grandmother and to celebrate his upcoming birthday was the only disagreeable witness out of the four who testified on Thursday.
The prosecutor told the jury that the witness overheard the shots that day, and instinctively dove to the ground.
The witness, however, was consistently resistant to providing testimony about the day. “Let’s just get this over with,” he muttered when Judge Raffinan first addressed him.
“I don’t wanna be here,” he told the prosecutor soon after, in direct examination. He had to be subpoenaed, he explained, and was forcibly brought to the courthouse for the trial.
The prosecutor produced his testimony to the Grand Jury in July 2018 ahead of Moses and Mayfield’s indictments. The witness repeatedly said he did not remember what he told the Grand Jury, and grew visibly frustrated as the prosecutor attempted to refresh his memory.
He said that on the day he testified, he was “snatched from the jail,” where he had been held pending unrelated charges. “Same type of Marshals that snatched me off the streets and made me come here,” the witness added.
The witness returned to the stand on the next trial day to finish his testimony.
The first witnesses called by the prosecutors during Thursday’s trial was a cell tower expert who spoke about the location of the defendant’s cell phones throughout the day of the shooting.
During direct examination, the witness testified to what cell towers each defendant’s phone connected to before, during, and after the time of the shooting. He also explained to the jury that, at one point, the two phone numbers were calling and receiving calls from one another, despite appearing to be in relatively the same location.
Later, there was a delay with the prosecution’s second witness of the day because of unforeseen confusion and miscommunication between the witness and the prosecution. When the witness came up the stand to testify, Veronice Holt, defense counsel for Mayfield, realized the woman had been sitting in the courtroom while she had been doing her cross examination of the cell site expert.
Because the witness was not supposed to be in the courtroom while another witness was testifying, defense counsel sought to strike the witness. However, after discussing with the prosecution and believing that there was no malice involved, Holt advocated for inclusion of the witness with the condition that she keep the scope of her testimony to what she testified about during the Grand Jury.
DC Superior Court Judge Maribeth Raffinan ruled that the witness could testify and her testimony could go beyond what she spoke about during the Grand Jury. However, due to time constraints, she was delayed and is scheduled to take the stand during the week of Nov. 14.
A third witness was called, a man who worked at a store in the Langdon Park neighborhood the day before the shooting. He said that on that day, Aug. 9, 2017, he saw three men get out of a car and pass his store.
He said he then heard gunshots, explaining that he first thought the three men had fired them. However, when he reviewed the store’s surveillance footage, he saw another man, running away from the three men and holding his hand out behind him as if brandishing a gun.
According to court documents, an incident on Aug. 9, 2017, in the ongoing feud between a group of men in the Langdon Park and a group in the Saratoga neighborhoods.
Court documents state the individual fleeing was from Saratoga, and to retaliate for his having fired shots at them, the three individuals, suspected to be Moses, Mayfield and an accomplice, allegedly planned to do the same in the Saratoga neighborhood the next day. That was what eventually resulted in the death of Sydnor.
However, the witness testified on Nov. 10 that he thought of the three men, all three were “smaller than me,” then clarifying that he meant in both height and weight. Mayfield does not fit this description.
The parties are scheduled to reconvene on Nov. 14.
A murder defendant’s trial was scheduled for the summer of 2023, almost two years after the incident.
During a Nov. 14 hearing, defendant Kevin Singletary, 45, is charged with first-degree murder, possession of a firearm during a crime of violence and unlawful possession of a firearm in relation to the shooting of Delonte Hazel, 31, on Sept. 10, 2021.
After defense attorney Howard McEachern pleaded not guilty on behalf of Singletary and requested a trial date, DC Superior Court Judge Marisa Demeo scheduled the trial to begin on Aug. 7, 2023.
Around 9:41p.m, Hazel was found with multiple gunshot wounds in a vehicle parked behind a building on the 100 block of Kennedy Street, NW, according to court documents.
DC Superior Court Judge Robert Okun rescheduled a felony status conference hearing due to the defendant’s co-council being busy in another trial.
Jalen Browne, 21, is charged with two counts of first-degree murder while armed in the deaths of 22-year-old Jovan Hill Jr. and 19-year-old Tariq Riley. Both victims were shot in the back on the afternoon of July 26, 2021, on the on the 100 block of Q Street, NW on grounds of an apartment complex in the Truxton Circle neighborhood. A third victim walked into a local hospital with a non-life threatening gunshot wound to the torso.
A plea offer was proposed but not decided upon. The offer consisted of pleading guilty to two counts of second-degree murder while armed for 20 years in prison.
Even though defense attorneys Brian McDaniel and Douglas Wood argued for Browne’s pretrial release, citing his good behavior at the jail, a business edict certificate, and his mother agreeing to be his third-party custodian the request was denied because of the nature of the offense.
Browne has not been indicted on the charges.
The next hearing is scheduled for Nov. 29
Metropolitan Police Department detectives are asking for the public’s help in locating a person of interest in connection to a non-fatal shooting that occurred on Nov. 9, on the 5700 block of Colorado Avenue, NW.
According to a press release, at about 4:02 pm, officers located a juvenile male suffering from an apparent gunshot wound.
