Columbia Heights Shootings Cause Alarm

He had returned home from a visit with his mother Saturday afternoon and was excited to download music on an iPod he had just gotten, Jenkins said.

He left his grandmother's apartment about 8:30 p.m. and met several friends who planned to hang out at one of their homes, she said.

Later that night, Terry's grandmother heard gunfire and left her apartment to search for her grandson. All of the youths except Terry were accounted for .

Jenkins questioned why there wasn't a more visible police presence on the block. "Someone just got shot there the day before," she said.

The police cruiser assigned to patrol the block had been called to Southeast, where a car had driven into a crowd of people attending the annual Unifest street festival Saturday evening, Graham said.

Notwithstanding the need for police at the festival, where at least 40 people were injured, Graham said he was troubled that the patrol car was sent across town so shortly after a shooting had occurred on the block.

"The fact that this officer moved from Girard Street Northwest to W Street Southeast is a comment on that there is a thin blue line," Graham said. "There shouldn't have been that kind of desperate need to pull that car away."

Graham said he returned to the block yesterday afternoon and did not see any police.

A police cruiser was parked on the block later in the evening.

In an interview, Lanier said police have been well positioned across the city. "I feel the officers are in the right places at the right times," because they respond quickly when violence occurs, she said.

Neighbors said violence has gotten worse in Columbia Heights over the past year. In late April, 18-year-old Edwin Ventura of the 1400 block of Harvard Street NW was fatally shot while with friends on Sherman Avenue NW, a few blocks from his home.

"I've been living around here since I was in diapers," said Chinata Nesbit, 21, who lived in an apartment across the hall from Terry. "It's never been this bad."

Staff writers Clarence Williams and Jacqueline L. Salmon contributed to this report.