Slain Teen Not Found Until the Next Morning

Gunshots Weren't Reported to Police

The gunshots were so loud Mary Nogay thought they might have been fired right outside her kitchen window. Five in rapid succession, she said. A pause. Then three more.

Although shaken, the 86-year-old Temple Hills woman did not call police. She and her husband went to bed Monday not knowing what had happened.

About 7 a.m. yesterday, authorities said, one of her neighbors called police to report that a child was unconscious in a yard -- Nogay's, it turned out. Nogay said she watched from her kitchen window a short time later as police turned over the body of a young man. He was still clutching a cellphone, she said.

Prince George's County police identified the victim as Duane Sheldon Hopkins Jr., 16, and said he had multiple gunshot wounds.

"Oh, just so young, my heart broke," Nogay said. "Had I reported it right away and called 911 . . . they could've been here and looked and found this boy."

Police said yesterday that the neighbor's 7 a.m. phone call was the first they heard of the shooting on Gaither Street in a residential neighborhood near G. Gardner Shugart Middle School. Several neighbors later said they heard gunshots between 7:30 and 8 p.m. Monday, but "no one thought to call police when they heard them," police spokesman Henry Tippett said.

"We didn't have any calls for service to check the area or sound of gunshots or anything," he said. "Whoever called said it looked like he saw the victim laying in his neighbor's yard."

Hopkins lived on 20th Place, a few blocks from Nogay's house, and was a sophomore at Suitland High School, Tippett said. He said police had no suspects in the slaying and were trying to determine why Hopkins was outside Nogay's house on Monday night.

Nogay said that children often cut through her yard to reach Gaither Street and that it appeared as if the teen had stumbled and fallen face first before police turned over his body. She said she heard no screams.

Friends and relatives poured in and out of Hopkins' house yesterday, sobbing and hugging one another on the front porch. A woman and man at the front door said they would have no comment.

Tippett said the slaying, the county's ninth this year, stood out because Hopkins was only 16.

"It's kind of unusual to get homicide victims this young," he said. "But unfortunately in this day and age, crime can affect anyone."

Staff writer Aaron C. Davis contributed to this report.