D.C. Teen Is Shot To Death In Home

Police Probing Possible Accident

A 16-year-old Southeast Washington youth was found dead in his bedroom yesterday, and police are investigating whether he was accidentally shot by a friend playing with a gun.

The youth, identified by relatives as Walter Robinson, was found by police at 11 a.m. with a gunshot wound to the head. A cousin said he was in his bed and might have been sleeping when he was shot. Two of Robinson's best friends had stayed overnight at the apartment, and Robinson's mother thought he was still sleeping when police knocked, relatives said.

One of the friends apparently had left the home after the shooting and notified police.

"He was dead in the house, and my mother didn't know," said Toni Robinson, 24, Walter's older sister, as family members gathered at the apartment.

Police are investigating whether one or both friends got into a game, perhaps Russian roulette, that ended with Robinson's death, authorities said.

Cmdr. Joel Maupin, head of the 7th District, said the shooting happened between 8 and 11 a.m. Many questions remain unanswered, including why police were not immediately called. The gun was gone when police arrived, and so was one of the youths who stayed overnight.

Police said they found a gun in a dumpster outside the apartment building and were investigating whether it was linked to Robinson's death. Authorities spent the day at the apartment, searching inside and outside the building.

Police also were searching last night for the missing friend.

Yellow tape held away visitors for hours from the 1300 block of Savannah Place SE, in the Congress Heights neighborhood, as children played on scooters and scampered to the ice cream truck. The apartment where the youth died is on the second floor of a three-story red brick building in a complex.

Toni Robinson said her brother attended Ballou High School, though he was not always into schoolwork. "He liked to get his hair braided and to look fresh," she said.

Robinson, who has her own apartment nearby, said their father has been incarcerated for several years and that he had asked her to look after her mother and younger brother.

Robinson, who is learning the electrical trade, said she gave her brother money weekly to buy music and clothes. She also said she took him and the two friends who stayed over Thursday night out to eat when she could afford it.

"He's a good boy," she said. "He was into fashion. He was my baby."

Family members said they believe the shooting was an accident.

"One of the boys was scared and crying," said a cousin, Deitria Johnson. "He told [Walter's] mother that it was an accident."