A man was killed and a 10-year-old boy was wounded in two separate shootings Saturday night and early Sunday morning in Washington, marking another violent stretch in a city still struggling to combat crime.
The shooting of the 10-year-old occurred at about 8:30 p.m. Saturday in the 3400 block of 13th Place SE, blocks away from the Congress Heights Metro station. Police said they believe the youngster was hit by a stray bullet fired during a shootout between two other people.
Jaykeya Wheeler, 30, said she was sitting inside her car with her mom in the area when she heard gunfire and ducked.
The shots were too numerous to count, she said. She remembered yelling, “Where is it coming from? Where is it coming from?” — worried she herself would be struck and killed.
When the shooting stopped after about a minute, she said she and her mother ran to the nearest building for safety. She soon saw first responders putting an injured boy in an ambulance. Her car had a bullet hole in the rear window, according to a police report. Wheeler said her driver-side front tire was also hit.
“I thought I was done. Me and my mother were in the car together and I just thought I was dead,” she said. “I didn’t know what to do. I was stuck in the seat belt. I couldn’t really move and I’m just so thankful that it didn’t happen to us.”
Police responded to the incident after hearing gunshots and found a 10-year-old boy shot in the leg, Commander LaShay Makal said at a Saturday night news conference. The boy, who was with his mother, was conscious and breathing and was transported to a hospital.
“We do not believe he was the intended target of this situation,” Makal said. “What we do have is evidence that shows he may have gotten caught between two individuals shooting at one another.”
Makal called it “devastating” that people continue to be shot as individuals use “firearms as a means of resolving conflict.”
“Please put the guns down,” she said.
The incident is under investigation and there have been no arrests, Makal said.
For Wheeler, a mother of two girls, ages 12 and 15, the experience underscored how much she would like to move her family away from her Southeast neighborhood, possibly to Maryland. But because of the costs associated with moving, she said she feels “stuck here in D.C.”
“It’s hard,” she said. “I’ve been trying to move. Every day, I’m fearful of them walking out and something happening. Me walking out, my mother and something happening.”
The second incident unfolded at about 3 a.m. Sunday in the 1600 block of Rosedale Street in Northeast, not far from Miner Elementary School.
Police identified the man killed in that shooting as Darius Robinson, 35, of Northwest. Charles Demarco Best, 25, of Clinton, Md., was arrested and charged with second degree murder, police said. His mother declined to comment.
“The detectives’ investigation suggests the victim and suspect were known to each other,” according to a D.C. police news release.
Efforts to reach Robinson’s relatives were not immediately successful.
On Friday, police responded to the 4300 block of Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue in Southwest Washington for a report of human remains. An adult body was found “in an advanced state of decomposition,” according to a D.C. police news release. The medical examiner’s office determined the individual died of gunshot injuries, police said.
Police have not yet identified the victim.
Homicides in the District, according to the latest police data, were down 26 percent compared with the same time in 2023 — a year that ended with more killings than in any single year since 1997.
