Judge Robert Richter found substantial probability Monday in the case againt Donald Dubose. Dubose is suspected of participating in the May 2012 drive-by shooting death of 34-year-old Michael Oshea Smith.
Smith was shot in the head May 12, 2012. Police found him at about 5:40 a.m. in the passenger seat of a vehicle on the 1200 block of Stevens Road Southeast. Medical workers arrived and pronounced Smith dead on scene. The driver of the car had been shot in the arm, but survived.
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Judge Russell Canan found substantial probability Monday in the case against Allen Culver. Prosecutors have charged Culver with the shooting death of 31-year-old Robert Plight. Culver remains held pending a grand jury investigation.
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Judge Herbert Dixon sentenced Mark Anthony Coates Monday to 23 years in prison for the December 2011 death of 56-year-old Leroy Studevant.
“There is absolutely nothing in your background to justify what you did,” Judge Dixon said. “I really wish you had walked away, or intervened to help.”
Prosecutors said Monday that Coates helped to kill a man over 30 years older than him during a fight for a cigarette. Studevant was found stabbed and strangled in a Northeast DC park on New Year’s Eve 2011. His death was ruled the first homicide of 2012.
“I just want to say I’m sorry for the family’s loss,” Coates said Monday. “It wasn’t supposed to be this way.”
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In brief:
Seventeen people died in five incidents in DC this week, including Aaron Alexis, who killed 12 people at Washington’s Navy Yard on Monday before being killed by police.
Those killed at the Navy Yard are:
For more details, see “The Day After the Navy Yard Shooting: Essential Reads” and “The Navy Yard Shooting: What We Know Now.”
Four separate homicides also claimed the lives of four DC men.
Gary Maye and Immanuel Swann pleaded guilty this week in connection with the stabbing death of 18-year-old Olijawon Griffin at the Woodley Park Metro Station in Nov. 2012. Maye and Swann are the fifth and sixth people to plead guilty in the case. The three remaining co-defendants are expected to stand trial Monday.
After four weeks of deliberations, jurors in the “21st and Vietnam” murder trial found Jekwan Smith, Stanley Moghalu and Johnnie Harris innocent of some of the most serious charges faced by the men: Moghalu and Harris were found innocent of murder and firearms charges in connection with the December 2011 shooting death of Steven Moore, Smith and Harris, charged with the death of Isaiah Sheffield, were found innocent of first-degree premeditated murder while armed. Smith and Harris could still be convicted of second-degree murder or voluntary manslaughter while armed in connection with Sheffield’s death. Jurors continue to deliberate on remaining charges in the case.
Deangelo Williams pleaded innocent Friday to charges of first-degree murder while armed, assault and related weapons offenses in connection with the 2011 shooting death of 18-year-old Lucki Pannell.
Herbert Hayes was sentenced to 40 years in prison for the May 2012 stabbing death of John Wesley Griffin. The sentencing was a significant and substantial departure from guidelines which recommended 15 to 26 years in prison. “You’ve just been committing violent crimes for 25 years. I have no confidence at all that you will ever change your ways,” Canan told Hayes at sentencing.
Darryl Matthews was ordered released Friday from a halfway house where he was held while a grand jury investigates a charge that he fatally stabbed 60-year-old Hayes Osei Dennis in July 2012. He was placed into the High Intensity Supervision Program.
Michael A. Smith, a 33-year-old Suitland, Md. resident, was charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy and other charges in connection with the March shooting death of Paul Aime Tanoh Danzo outside the Balletto nightclub in Northwest DC. The US Attorney’s Office said Saturday that Smith was arraigned Friday and that the charges were part of a case that initially charged him as being an accessory after the fact.
One of the men involved in an Adams Morgan bar fight has died of his injuries and police now say the case is now being considered a homicide.
MPD said Saturday afternoon that the man, 45-year-old Rockwell John Flint of Northwest, DC, died Friday, about three weeks after being injured.
WJLA reports that Flint was the “Good Samaritan” who was injured while trying to subdue an unruly and violent bar patron.
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Police have identified Timothy Benjamin, 58, as the victim in a fatal stabbing just after midnight Saturday morning.
Benjamin, a Northwest D.C. resident, was found “lying on his back in the rear of the 5300 block of Georgia Avenue NW suffering from apparent multiple stab wounds,” police said in a statement.
MPD’s full press release is below: Read more
A man was fatally stabbed in a fight in Northwest DC early Saturday morning, WJLA reports.
Police issued the following lookout in connection with the case:
Police Alert- Stabbing_0045_1200 block of Ingraham Street, NW_B/M 5'8”, short hair, orange/white shirt, muscular… http://t.co/sP91fYu3FX
— dcalerts (@dcalerts) September 21, 2013
Each week, Homicide Watch brings you a list of upcoming hearings in the cases we follow. All hearings are scheduled for 9:30 a.m. unless otherwise noted. To add an item to the listing, email homicidewatchdc [at] gmail.com. To see scheduled court hearings beyond next week, see our calendar.
MPD said Friday afternoon that one person has been arrested in connection with the shooting death of Paul Aime Tanoh Danzo outside the Balletto nightclub in Northwest DC.
A camera captured video of the two men showing their identification cards as they enter what looks to be a nightclub.
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Jurors in the “21st and Vietnam” murder trial reached yet another partial verdict on Friday, announcing decisions on a total of five charges against Jekwan Smith, Johnnie Harris, and Stanley Moghalu.
The verdict is the fourth in the case; jurors have been deliberating since Aug. 20.
On Friday the jury found Smith and Harris, charged with the death of Isaiah Sheffield, innocent of first-degree premeditated murder while armed. The two men could still be convicted of second-degree murder or voluntary manslaughter while armed in connection with Sheffield’s death. The jury will continue to deliberate on those charges.
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