While teens played basketball at the Joe Cole Community Center Monday night, a group of about 20 people joined together nearby in prayer. They were gathered in the name of a woman none of them knew, but who was brutally stabbed just a few hundred feet from where they stood.
“It’s been just all I can think about since it happened,” said ANC commissioner Tina Laskaris, who organized the event with staff from the community center.
Alecia Wheeler was a 42-year-old mother of four who had just picked up up her children from the rec center last Tuesday when a man drove up to her, jumped out of his truck, threw her against it, and began stabbing her. She died of her injuries that afternoon. Her husband, Claude Kinney, has been arrested on suspicion of first-degree murder while armed in connection with the case.
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Judge Karen Howze this afternoon ruled that a fatal game of Russian Roulette, which killed twenty-year-old Lugus Fleming on Friday night, could not be a crime of second-degree murder because the teen who fired the fatal shot believed that the gun was empty.
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Homicide Watch has confirmed that a vigil in memory of Alecia Wheeler is planned for this evening. An email this afternoon states:
Please join me at a vigil for murder victim Alicia Wheeler 6 pm at the Joe Cole recreation center 1299 Neal St. N.E. Monday September 19th at 6 pm coordinated by ANC 5b08 commissioner Tina Laskaris, Joe Cole recreation staff, and neighbors of the Trinidad community. 42-year-old Alicia Wheeler was murdered after picking up her four children from the Joseph Cole Community Center. Please come out and support this Family and let’s stop domestic violence.
A memorial for Myles “LaShay” McLean, who was killed in July, has been burned, WAMU reports.
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An annual report by the FBI released today shows the use of firearms in murders and nonnegligent manslaughters in the District to be slightly higher than the national average.
Of the 132 reported homicides in the District in 2010, firearms were used in 99 of them, or approximately 75 percent. Nationally, firearms were used in 67.5 percent of homicides in 2010, the FBI reported.
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Reginald Vance and Derrell Bennett pleaded innocent this morning to charges that they shot and killed Keith Banks in Nov. 2010.
Banks was 29 years old when he was shot and killed in Northeast D.C. near Fort Circle Parks.
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We’re working to confirm this, but District Curmudgeon reports on Twitter that a vigil in memory of Alecia Wheeler is planned for tonight.
In brief:
Alecia Wheeler, a 42-year-old Northeast D.C. woman, was fatally stabbed in Trinidad in front of her children. Wheeler’s husband, Claude Kinney, was arrested in connection with the case and ordered held pending a preliminary hearing.
MPD took over a homicide investigation from Prince George’s County, when it was determined that murder victim Antwain Henderson was killed in D.C. before his body was found in a burning car in Prince George’s County.
Twenty-year-old Lugus Fleming of Northeast D.C. was killed in a shooting Friday night in Northeast D.C. Terrell Rashad Brent, 19, was arrested on suspicion of second-degree murder in connection with the case.
Kevin Clark and Donald Crosland pleaded guilty to charges that they shot and killed 17-year-old Ricardo Minger in a Southeast D.C. apartment in January.
Jerome Bailey pleaded guilty today to second-degree murder in the shooting death of Rico Matthews, whom Bailey believed was having a relationship with a woman that he also saw.
Derrell Bennett and Reginald Vance were indicted each on a charge of first-degree murder while armed in connection with the shooting death of Keith Banks in Nov. 2010.
A shooting in Northeast D.C. Friday night killed 20-year-old Lugus Fleming of Northeast D.C., MPD said Saturday.
Terrell Rashad Brent, 19, was arrested on suspicion of second-degree murder, MPD said.
MPD’s release is after the jump.
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This comment of the day comes from Mary_spears143, who wrote in about Kerstan Leonard’s conviction in June of first-degree murder in the 2008 shooting death of Melody Williams at an apartment complex in Southeast DC.
Melody was my great aunt and he shot my 2 daughters her nieces on that fateful day….yes he was convicted but at sentencing on Sept 9, 2011 he also fired his paid attorney that he hired after he fired 2 public defenders asking for a new court appointed lawyer so he could file a motion for a new trial due to not be represented properly. IT WILL BE 3 YRS DEC 5, 2011 AND NOW WE MAY HAVE TO GO THROUGH YET ANOTHER TRIAL? R.I.P. AUNT MELODY WILLIAMS….JUSTICE WILL BE SERVED…..SOONER OR LATER……….
