DC Superior Court Judge Neal Kravitz heard from witnesses, including a detective and investigative analyst, in a mass shooting case with six co-defendants during a hearing on June 18.
Erwin Dubose, 31, Kamar Queen, 28, Damonta Thompson, 28, and William Johnson-Lee, 22, are charged with conspiracy, premeditated first-degree murder while armed, assault with intent to kill while armed, assault with significant bodily injury while armed, among other charges, for their alleged involvement in the mass shooting that killed 31-year-old Donnetta Dyson, 24-year-old Keenan Braxton, and 37-year-old Johnny Joyner. The incident occurred on the 600 block of Longfellow Street, NW on Sept. 4, 2021, and injured three additional individuals.
Mussay Rezene, 32, and Toyia Johnson, 53, are charged with accessory after the fact while armed and tampering with physical evidence for their alleged involvement in assisting the other defendants discard evidence and avoid arrests.
The prosecution called a Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) homicide detective to the stand to testify about slang terms used in messages exchanged among the defendants. The detective explained that his experience working in MPD’s homicide unit and conducting thousands of interviews with civilians made him qualified to decipher the coded language.
Such as “smacks” to refer to tinted car windows and “drake” or “draco” to refer to AK-47 style automatic pistols, which the prosecution said were used in messages to and fron the defendants.
The prosecutors also questioned the detective about the arrest of Johnson-Lee on May 24, 2023 at the 8000 block of Eastern Drive in Silver Spring, Maryland inside his mother’s vehicle.
The detective said a search warrant for Johnson-Lee’s car did not yield any weapons.
During cross-examination, Johnson-Lee’s lawyer, Peter Fayne, asked the detective what items were found inside of the vehicle. The detective said MPD seized four cellphones from the vehicle and submitted search warrants to look through them.
Prosecutors also questioned the detective about Dubose’s arrest on Oct. 13, 2021 because he was present for Dubose’s questioning. The detective said MPD seized a silver color chain, a Zap Car Rental receipt, shoe lace holders, a ticket and black and green Nike Air Jordans, which were presented to the jury.
The prosecution also presented a Ring camera video image they believe to be one of the defendants running through a yard on the 1300 block of Hamilton Street, NW with a ski mask on, which is located near the shooting occurred.
The prosecution called an investigative analyst, who presented a series of phone records to the jury from before and after the crime, detailing calls from Aug. 20 to Sept. 30. The phone records suggested that the defendants interacted often leading up to the hour of the crime and minutes after.
The investigative analyst told the court that any communication that may have taken place over Apple’s Facetime or iMessage features were not evidence he had investigated as he was only able to track phone calls and SMS–or short message service–messages.
In a cross-examination, Rezene’s attorney, Kevin Robertson, questioned the phone numbers he had analyzed, hinting that there may have been other individuals involved in the string of calls. The witness confirmed that he had only analyzed ten phone numbers that were all provided by the prosecution and admitted there were some phone numbers, presented in court, which he had not investigated substantially.
Further, the prosecution indicated that two of the phone numbers used in the string of calls allegedly associated with Dubose and Johnson-Lee had deleted their accounts with their phone carrier, immediately after making their last calls, specifically on Sept. 10 and 13.
Parties are slated to reconvene on June 23.
