A D.C. Superior Court judge Wednesday said prosecutors have enough evidence to convince a jury to convict a 29-year-old man of first-degree murder in the shooting death of 11-year-old Karon Brown in July.
McClam’s defense attorney contended that McClam was fearing death when he fired because he thought the car’s driver was threatening him.
Following a nearly six-hour hearing, Judge Craig Iscoe rejected the defense claim and ordered that McClam be jailed pending trial.
“Self-defense is simply not present in this case,” Iscoe said. “His actions were intended to kill someone in that car.”
Wednesday’s proceeding was the first full hearing following the July 18 shooting that sparked outrage in the city. While a detective testified that McClam, another adult and two children had been involved in a dispute with Karon, neither the detective nor the lawyers on the case said what it was about.
Karon was shot just before 7 p.m. after running from a physical fight with one of those children, who was with McClam, Detective Anthony Greene of the D.C. police testified.
McClam, according to Greene’s testimony, never touched Karon during that altercation in front of the McDonald’s, near a gas station at Naylor Road SE and Alabama Avenue SE.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Liebman showed a video of a silver Nissan Sentra pulling into the gas station and Karon jumping inside. Greene testified that the driver and passenger saw Karon being beaten and stopped to see if he needed help.
Greene testified that as the sedan pulled off, McClam and the group began to walk away. But then the car — with Karon in the back seat — made a U-turn and drove back to the gas station.
The driver, authorities said they recently learned, returned to the gas station because he realized he had forgotten to stop and buy cigarettes, which is why he had been headed there in the first place, Greene said.
When the sedan returned to the gas station, the men inside the car recognized McClam and his group and tried to speed off, Greene said. He said it was then that McClam began shooting.
McClam’s public defender James King argued that his client did not know Karon was in the back seat. King said at least one witness told authorities that the driver had leaned down in his seat as if he were reaching for a weapon.
Greene testified that there were no weapons found in the vehicle after the shooting and the only shell casings at the scene came from McClam’s gun.
Liebman said that, based on where McClam was standing when the Nissan initially pulled up, he had to have seen Karon climb into the car’s back seat. He also said that the Nissan was driving away from McClam when he began shooting, which in his estimation indicated that McClam was not in any danger.
“It made no sense for the defendant to shoot at the car, unless he saw that the little boy with whom must minutes earlier he had a tussle with, was inside it,” Liebman said.
Greene said Karon and McClam were also involved in an “altercation” three days earlier. Details of that prior altercation were not revealed. Police arrested McClam two days after Karon’s shooting. Authorities said McClam told police that he had purchased the 9mm handgun for protection after the fatal shooting of his brother, which happened in 2015.
But Liebman argued that if McClam were fearful, he would have purchased the gun four years ago. Instead, McClam purchased the gun in May, just two months before Karon was shot, authorities said. A witness, Greene testified, told police that McClam often carried that gun in a fanny pack around his hip.
Karon’s mother, Kathren Brown, began to cry as the prosecutor showed a photo of the Nissan’s gray-interior back seat, covered in blood. After the hearing, still wiping tears outside the courtroom, Brown said she was glad McClam was held in jail.
“I just want this to be over,” she said. “I am just ready for all of this to be over.”