Two men were shot to death early Tuesday in the Forest Heights area of Prince George’s County, authorities said.
Shots rang out in the 600 block of Modoc Lane about 1:50 a.m., police said. Residents in the neighborhood of single-family homes reported hearing a few shots, then a pause, then more shots.
Cpl. Evan Baxter, a Prince George’s police spokesman, said officers arrived to find both men dead. They were identified as Okasha M. Hawkins, 22, who lived on the street where the shooting occurred, and Joshua Carroll, 23, of Southeast Washington. Law enforcement sources said that one of the men was lying in the street and that the other was in a yard nearby.
Ismelda Ortiz, 32, said she was awakened by gunfire — two shots, a pause, and then five or six more — before telling her children to lie on the floor. She said that as she took cover, she heard what sounded like someone running by her house.
The motive for the shooting was unclear.
Several people gathered at the house where Hawkins lived declined to comment. Reached by phone, Hawkins’s mother declined to comment. Carroll’s family could not be reached.
Cleophus Rice, 81, a neighbor, said the shooting was shocking in a neighborhood that was “so quiet.”
“You may see some kids in the street now and then, you know, average,” Rice said of Forest Heights. “That’s why I’m kind of surprised.”
The double slaying brings the number of homicides in Prince George’s this year to 45, including fatal police shootings and one killing that was deemed justified. It was also the third homicide in three days. On Sunday night, 36-year-old Christian C. Dudley was shot to death at his home in the 8500 block of Grandhaven Avenue in Upper Marlboro, authorities said.
At this time last year, the county had recorded 34 homicides, including fatal police shootings and those deemed justified.
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