High School Senior Killed in Northwest

An 18-year-old high school senior who was planning to become a steamfitter and thinking about college was shot and killed early yesterday on a street corner in the District's Columbia Heights area.

Edwin Ventura, who lived on Harvard Street NW and attended Bell Multicultural High School, was shot about 12:35 a.m. as he stood with several others at Columbia Road and Sherman Avenue NW.

Two assailants walked up, and at least one opened fire, police said. Ventura's family said the attackers were masked and shot him five times. Another person was wounded. Police gave no motive and said they were investigating.

D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), who called the killing "a terrible tragedy," said he was told that police are looking into the possibility that the slaying was gang related.

Gang violence had afflicted the area in the past but has not been reported there since fall 2003, Graham said.

"I hope this doesn't signal" a new outbreak, he said. "We had been making really great progress."

Ventura's relatives said last night that he went out about 7:30 p.m. to go to a party with friends.

His sister and a cousin said he worked at a Starbucks coffee shop, was planning for college and had never been in trouble.

"He was a comedian," said Maria Ventura, a cousin. "He made the family laugh. He always knew how to put a smile on our faces."

He had grown up in the District and was the father of a 4-month-old girl, and the family was planning to move to larger quarters so the child and her mother could live with them, his sister, Jessica Ventura, said.

Maria Tukeva, principal of Bell Multicultural, said Ventura was in the school's math, science and business academy, taking pre-engineering courses.

They were to prepare him for a steamfitters apprenticeship program, she said.

Tukeva called him "a very nice young man" who had "a clear focus and clear plans for what he planned to do after graduation."