A 16-year-old was arrested Tuesday and charged with second-degree murder in the fatal shooting of a teenager last week on the platform of the Brookland-CUA Metro station in Northeast Washington, police said.
Like other media organizations, The Washington Post, which generally does not identify defendants who are charged as juveniles, was allowed to attend the confidential court hearing on the condition that it not disclose the youth’s name.
Detective Kevin Decker, whose testimony was based largely on security camera video, said in court that the 16-year-old arrived at the outdoor platform with other teenagers and stood in the background as one of his companions and Avion began fighting. During the fight, Decker said, the 16-year-old reached into his waistband and pulled out a handgun.
Decker said Avion, who did not have a weapon, was standing and no longer fighting when the 16-year-old fired a bullet into his chest. Decker said police later found a 9mm shell casing near Avion’s body. There were more than a dozen other people on the platform at the time of the shooting, Decker said. He said the 16-year-old also pointed the gun at another teenager, but that youth ran away.
In announcing the arrest at a news conference Tuesday, D.C. Police Chief Pamela A. Smith declined to comment on a possible motive. She also declined to say whether the teens knew each other.
Prosecutors are allowed to charge juveniles who are 16 or older as adults in murder cases. That decision is made by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. A spokeswoman for the office declined to comment on charging decisions.
Asked about the 16-year-old being charged as a juvenile, Smith said: “I’m not a lawyer. … What I do believe is when young people, or anyone, commits this type of crime, they should be held accountable, whether they are charged as an adult or as a juvenile.”
At Tuesday’s juvenile proceeding in Superior Court, Magistrate Judge Dorsey Jones ordered the 16-year-old to be detained in a facility run by the D.C. Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services pending prosecution. The 16-year-old is scheduled to return to court Friday.
In an unusual move, Jones, at the request of a defense lawyer, ordered reporters to leave the courtroom while a court social services employee briefed the judge on the 16-year-old’s educational and psychological history and any previous arrests. Jones later said from the bench that the youth had no previous arrests.
The 16-year-old’s mother, seated in the courtroom next to the youth’s stepfather and brother, wiped away tears as her son was led out of the courtroom by juvenile detention officers.
Avion was the second teenager killed on consecutive days last week. Irving Laboard, also 14, was fatally shot Wednesday morning in the Fort Dupont area of Southeast Washington. No arrest has been made in that case.
The killings of Irving and Avion bring to three the number of juveniles slain in D.C. this year. Nineteen people under the age of 19 were homicide victims in the District in 2023, when the city recorded 274 killings, the worst toll in a quarter-century. Homicides are down 28 percent so far this year, with 44 recorded through Monday night.
Smith said surveillance video played a key role in the arrest. On Monday, she cited the case as an example of how police in a new crime information center can quickly access live video feeds from surveillance cameras. She said that enabled police to quickly publicize photos of the alleged shooter that helped in the investigation.
Decker said in court that after police released a photo of the alleged shooter, a person called authorities and identified the youth by his name, his birth date and the high school he attended.
George Nader, deputy chief of the Metro Transit Police Department, said the incident is a “reflection of what’s going on in society in general. There are a lot of guns out there in the wrong people’s hands.”
Nader said the department had more than doubled patrols in the Metro system over the past year.
