Police Say Credit Cards Tie Suspect to Beating

Prince George's County police investigating the savage beating of an elderly man outside a College Park church on Christmas Eve found credit cards linking the suspect to the crime, according to charging documents made public yesterday.

Shanon Washington, 28, who was arrested Friday, appeared in court yesterday and was ordered held without bond. He is charged with attempted murder in the beating of Wayne Williams, 69, outside Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in College Park.

According to the charging documents, Williams told police he was sleeping in his vehicle in the church parking lot before going to midnight Mass when he was awakened by an assailant "who began beating him in the face with his fists." The attacker took his wallet, which contained $400 in cash, as well as credit cards and identification.

Williams suffered life-threatening head injuries and blood loss, the documents say. He remains at Washington Hospital Center, where he has been upgraded to fair condition, a hospital spokeswoman said.

In announcing the arrest, county police said little about the evidence against Washington. Detectives found surveillance camera images of a Ford Explorer in the area shortly after the attack. A College Park resident saw the images and called police with a tip: A man who used to live in the area drove a similar truck and had a violent past.

The information prompted detectives to start looking for Washington, who had grown up a few blocks from the church. On New Year's Day, police found Washington outside a friend's home, standing next to his Explorer.

Washington's Explorer, however, was not the one caught on the tape. Police have said that, in what they call a lucky break, the wrong car led them to the right man.

The charging documents released yesterday shed light on why police suspect Washington in the attack.

"As a result of interviews three of Mr. Williams' credit cards were recovered from a motel that Mr. Washington had rented shortly after the incident," the documents say.

Washington, a Capitol Heights resident, pleaded guilty in 2005 to two counts of manslaughter with a motor vehicle and was sentenced to 10 years in prison, with all but two years suspended.

In 2006, he was accused in two violent attacks in College Park: He was charged with first-degree assault for allegedly beating a man with a metal baton during a robbery in March and then with attempted murder for allegedly stabbing a man in December.

Both charges were dropped by county prosecutors.

Ramon Korionoff, a spokesman for State's Attorney Glenn F. Ivey, said prosecutors dropped the charges in the stabbing case because the victim lacked credibility and refused to name Washington as his attacker, even though he and Washington were associates.

Prosecutors chose not to go forward with the beating case, he said, because it involved a fight between two people and it was unclear who started it. Witnesses at the scene were unreliable and did not cooperate in the prosecution, Korionoff said.

Last week, Washington was initially arrested on three charges not related to the attack outside the church: a parole violation in Prince George's, failure to appear in court on a robbery charge in Howard County and a federal charge for possession of a machine gun.

In the beating of Williams, Washington is charged with attempted murder, first-degree assault and robbery.

In District Court yesterday before Judge Thomas J. Love, Washington said little except that he planned to hire an attorney.