An employee for the D.C. Housing Authority parked outside the Potomac Gardens apartment complex near Capitol Hill was fatally shot Thursday afternoon after police said he was apparently robbed while eating lunch in his vehicle.
The daylight shooting was the District’s fourth homicide in 24 hours, a spate of deadly violence that started Wednesday afternoon when a 15-year-old Anacostia High School student was shot and killed. Later that night, authorities said two people, described by neighbors and police as a man with special needs and his home health aide, were shot during what officials said is being investigated as a robbery at a Northeast Washington rowhouse.
The District’s homicide count stands at 133, about 6 percent above last year’s pace, which jumped nearly 40 percent from the previous year.
“To be quite honest, I’m sick and tired of the shootings that are happening in our city, and I think collectively we have to do something about it,” D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham told reporters after the teenager was killed.
No quadrant of the District has been spared from violence in recent weeks, causing concern in neighborhoods from Columbia Heights to Shaw to Kingman Park to Deanwood. Gunmen have shot from speeding cars and using high-powered rifles.
The latest fatal shooting came shortly before 1 p.m. Thursday, when police said the housing employee was parked on a street at the entrance to Potomac Gardens, a public housing complex south of Pennsylvania Avenue and east of the Marine Barracks at 8th and I streets SE.
Police Cmdr. Morgan Kane, who heads the 1st District station, said patrol officers responded to calls for shots fired and found the victim inside the complex. She said that “the individual was here on his lunch break” and that detectives are investigating the case as an attempted robbery. Police said they would be reviewing surveillance cameras to see whether the incident was captured.
Jose C. Sousa, a D.C. Housing Authority spokesman, would not provide details of the worker or describe his job earlier Thursday because police had not yet identified him. “We at the District of Columbia Housing Authority are deeply saddened by the loss of one of our employees,” he said in a statement.
On Thursday, police identified a suspect sought in the fatal shootings inside a rowhouse in the 1600 block of Rosedale Street NE in Kingman Park. Davon Peyton, 27, of Alexandria, Va., was charged in a warrant with first-degree murder while armed, police said.
The victims were identified as Devon Miler, 24, who lived in the two-story home with his grandmother, and Lekelefac Fonge, 27, of Lanham, Md. Relatives for Fonge could not be reached.
A woman who said she was related to Miler and two neighbors who recalled him growing up described a young man full of smiles who loved to dance but was largely nonverbal. The neighbors and relative declined to provide their names, citing safety fears and to protect the victims’ privacy.
“This is a community that is broken,” one woman said. “Everyone here knew Devon as he grew up.”
Police identified the 15-year-old who was killed Wednesday afternoon in the 1300 block of Half Street SW, in the James Creek public housing complex near the waterfront and Nationals Park, as Thomas Johnson of Southeast Washington.
Police did not cite a specific motive but said the shooting appeared to be targeted. “It looks like they were looking for this young man for some reason, and they took his life,” Newsham said.
Authorities made public a surveillance picture of what appeared to be a young man sprinting from the shooting, which occurred about 1:20 p.m. The FBI doubled a $25,000 reward offered by D.C. police for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the case.
Police said the youth did not live in the neighborhood in which he was shot. His relatives could not be reached. In a letter to the school community, Anacostia High School Principal William Haith said Thomas’s death is a “devastating loss.”
Thomas was the ninth juvenile between 11 and 17 killed in the District this year. Nine juveniles between 10 and 17 were slain in the city in 2018.
Several times in recent days, Newsham continued his long-standing argument blaming violence on the proliferation of illegal firearms and a criminal justice system he says fails to adequately punish offenders his officers arrest.
“We also need to start looking at policies and how we’re going to hold people accountable,” the chief said. “We have to take a close look to see if the penalties that are being handed out for carrying illegal firearms in our community are changing behavior. It is my opinion that they are not.”
Correction: This story was updated to correct the spelling of Devon Miler, which was misspelled by D.C. police in a statement.
Magda Jean-Louis, Perry Stein and Clarence Williams contributed to this report.