Video Footage Shows 3 Suspects Flee Into Black Charger

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A witness testifies about surveillance video of his property on the day of the shooting during a murder trial.

Co-defendants Saquan Williams, 20, and Quincy Garvin, 22, are charged with first-degree murder while armed, possession of a firearm, criminal street gang affiliation and conspiracy in connection to the shooting of 24-year-old Carl Hardy on the 1200 block of I Street, SE, on Sept. 10, 2017. Hardy later succumbed to his injuries on Oct. 1, 2017, at Prince George’s Hospital Center in Maryland.

On June 8, the prosecution called a former resident of the Potomac Gardens neighborhood to the stand. The witness testified that he provided the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) with footage of the front of his property on the 1200 block of I Street, SE.

The footage depicted three individuals, holding objects that appeared to be firearms, fleeing into a black Dodge Charger. 

The footage was recorded at 5:56 p.m. on Sept. 10, 2017, just minutes before MPD officers were first dispatched to the block at 5:58 p.m. after reports of shots fired. MPD discovered Hardy upon arriving at the scene.

According to court documents, an anonymous source identified two of the fleeing individuals in the video via text message. The source provided MPD with the Instagram accounts of Williams and Garvin.

A custodian of records for Instagram verified various Instagram accounts and profile images associated with the defendants. 

A MPD officer testified, on June 7, that a blue-gray Honda Accord G35 and a white Infiniti Sedan were seized in connection to an additional shooting on the 2500 block of Pomeroy Road, SE, on Sept. 17, 2017. The prosecution called a forensic scientist from Elite Forensic Services to testify about latent fingerprints that were lifted from these vehicles in an effort to link the defendants to the second shooting.

After Steven Kirsch, Garvin’s defense attorney, questioned the witness concerning error rates in fingerprint analysis and the witness’ expertise, the prosecution qualified the forensic scientist as a fingerprint expert, asking for his conclusions regarding the identities of the latent fingerprints. 

The expert testified that the government sent him 73 digital photographs of various surfaces of the vehicles, from which he was able to examine 55 latent fingerprints and compare them to the known fingerprints of 14 individuals. Among the 55 latent fingerprints, he was able to identify three prints belonging to Williams and three prints belonging to Garvin. Both sets of fingerprints were found on the blue-gray Honda Accord. 

Williams’ defense attorney Kevin Robertson and Kirsch probed into the subjective factors in the expert’s analysis. They asked the expert whether, to his knowledge, he was the only fingerprint examiner in this case, to which the expert responded that his conclusions were blindly verified by a third party examiner. 

An additional witness to the stand to testify about a separate May 1, 2017 incident that occurred on the intersection of 13th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, SE. The witness stated that he saw three or four individuals exit a dark-colored vehicle and start shooting with assault-style firearms before fleeing the scene in the same vehicle. 

The witness explained that he initially “thought that it was [his] nephews playing jokes,” which caused him to “jump into action.”

The witness stated that he “started going after them,” but lost sight of the vehicle in the Potomac Gardens neighborhood.

DC Superior Court Judge Robert Okun scheduled the trial to resume June 9. 

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