A Fatal Clash Between Street and Success

Shirley Williams said she's not sure where their father lives. She said their mother died in a car crash about 10 years ago, leaving her brother with deep emotional scars. "I don't know how to put it, what happened to him," she said. "It's like he wasn't that complete all the way anymore."

The siblings lived with a succession of relatives after that, she said, eventually settling on Kane Place with their maternal grandmother, a 74-year-old stroke victim who is barely mobile.

"It was a big breakdown for him at a young age, growing up from house to house," Shirley said of her brother. "He just joined the wrong group, which made him go on the path that he did."

She said she thinks he wanted to work in the electronics field someday. She said he didn't use drugs or have a juvenile arrest record, as far as she knows. And she said she never saw him with a gun.

Kush recalled his last attempt at counseling Williams, in mid-summer. "He told me, 'Well, I'm a winner.' I said: 'How can you be a winner? You don't even have a diploma.' I told him: 'You have to be in school. You have to help yourself.' " Williams just scoffed, Kush said.

Then they had an angry encounter in early September, after Kush upbraided Williams and his porch pals for yelling obscenities in front of Kush's girlfriend. The two tussled briefly, Kush said, but nothing came of it.

Harrell, who took a Swahili first name, lived with his widowed mother about a mile from Kane Place. When he stopped by Kush's house to visit about 6 p.m. Sept. 27, Kush was surprised by his attire: jeans and a black T-shirt. Because Harrell worked so much, Kush said, he hardly ever saw him out of uniform. And it would occur to him later that Harrell, in uniform, always wore a bullet-resistant vest under his shirt. That evening, though, his vest was in his car.

Police officers with the geospatial-intelligence agency have no law enforcement powers in the community; they leave their guns at the Bethesda campus after their shifts. So Harrell was unarmed.

Two of Kush's friends were in the house that Saturday night, helping him prepare materials for a speech in Philadelphia. Kush said the teenagers loitering on the porch nearby were especially loud. About 8 p.m., fed up with the noise, Kush said, he grabbed a camera, intending to photograph the youths and send the pictures to the property's landlord.

But Harrell took the camera from his brother's hand, insisting that he should be the one to go out and do it.

He was, after all, a cop.

Kush said he watched from his porch as his brother stood near the other house, snapping pictures. "And they started pouring off the porch," Kush said. "A bunch of teenagers." As the youths surrounded Harrell on the sidewalk, Kush said, a scuffle broke out and spilled into the street. Kush said he was coming to his brother's aid when Williams appeared, a few feet from Harrell, pointing a handgun. He said Williams, without a word, squeezed the trigger once.

"You shot me," Harrell said, before he keeled over backward and lost consciousness. Standing frozen, Kush said, he looked at Williams as the teenager glared at him, the gun at his side.

"Now what's up?" said Williams, according to Kush, who is one of two witnesses quoted in a police affidavit as identifying the youth as the shooter.

Another homicide, multiple casualties on a city street. As Kush dropped to his knees by his brother's side, he said, Williams, in jeans and a dark hooded sweat shirt, turned and ran, vanishing in the drizzly night.