Police Still Seeking Answers In Slaying of D.C. Activist

The clock ticked past 10 p.m., and the D.C. Council chamber was emptying after five hours of testimony about rent control. Chris Crowder, the final speaker, rolled to the microphone in his motorized wheelchair and seized the moment as if the whole world was watching.

Dismissing the council members who skipped the hearing and calling their action "appalling," Crowder went on to compare tax breaks for developers to a Jesse James train robbery. Then, as his time ended, he managed to squeeze in a plug for his fledgling quest for the District's top political seat.

"I'm mayor-in-waiting," he said, brandishing a flier promoting his candidacy and promising sweeping changes when "Brother Chris and Team D.C. takes over."

Crowder, 44, never got the chance to embark on what even his admirers concede would have been a longer-than-long-shot campaign. A week ago, at an hour when most of the neighborhood was asleep, he was shot multiple times in a small park around the corner from the Northwest apartment he shared with his mother. Police found him dead on the ground next to his wheelchair, a block from a recreation center where a bullet had paralyzed him 16 years earlier.

Today, as he's buried and investigators seek a suspect and a motive, Crowder's friends and family will memorialize him as a man who did not allow his disability to quash his passion for speaking on behalf of the disenfranchised, whether the stage was a sidewalk in his Shaw neighborhood or an ornate hearing room.

In the strata of District politics, Crowder operated on the fringe, that terrain reserved for the unelected and unappointed -- self-styled activists who relish the chance to rail against the political establishment. What he may have lacked in legal know-how and negotiating skills, Crowder more than made up for with unvarnished bluster and seemingly good intentions.

"He simply believed it was his right to challenge authority, it was his necessity to keep them on the edge," said Lawrence Guyot, a Shaw community leader. "He gave no quarter, asked for none, and insisted on being a part of the total political fabric."

In death, at least for some friends and associates, Crowder has come to personify the inequality he often spoke against. Whereas the murder of a white British man in Georgetown last weekend was followed by quick arrests, friends have noted no such success in the case of Crowder, an African American who lived in a neighborhood populated by many poor and moderate-income residents.

"Chris was killed this week, and there's no suspects, there's no semblance of a suspect," said a friend, Roberta McLeod. She got to know Crowder at Howard University, where she works and he attended college. "This young white man was killed in Georgetown, a woman was assaulted -- it was horrific. But within hours you've arrested four people. There's a big outcry. Something's not balanced about that."

Why Crowder was killed is only one question detectives are seeking to answer. They also are trying to learn why he was outdoors at 3 a.m. A second man who was shot in the incident is in critical condition. Police have not released the victim's name because he is a potential witness.

In recent months, community leaders and police say, the neighborhood just east of the Washington Convention Center has been rife with skirmishes between rival gangs.

The park where Crowder was shot -- on N Street between Sixth and Seventh -- is a hangout "known for a lot of drug dealing and lots of guns," said Lt. Michael Smith, who lives a block away and has patrolled the area.