A surge of violence in the District of Columbia has claimed its 200th victim this year with the deadly shooting of a teenager Tuesday in the city’s Northwest area.
Acting Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith said the teen had just left Dunbar High School when he was shot around 3:45 p.m. near the intersection of New Jersey Avenue NW and P Street NW.
Police said the boy, who wasn’t identified, was talking with a group of teens when a member of the group pulled out a gun and shot at the victim multiple times. He died while being treated at a local hospital.
Authorities said the suspects are two Black males, with one wearing a black hoodie and jeans and the other wearing a gray hoodie and black and red shoes. They were last seen heading east on the 300 block of P St NW.
A man was killed in the crossfire of a separate shootout in the Southeast area an hour later Tuesday, the police chief said.
The victim, who wasn’t identified, was caught between two vehicles firing on each other around 4:45 p.m. on the 1300 block of Savannah Street SE. Police pronounced the man dead at the scene.
“We have had two members of our community killed by senseless acts of gun violence,” Chief Smith said Tuesday near the site of the teen’s slaying. “We have too many guns on our streets, and as a community we need to do everything we can to stop this violence from plaguing our city.”
Chief Smith urged anyone with information on Tuesday’s shootings to come forward.
D.C.’s top cop also shared that the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner recently ruled eight undetermined deaths as homicides, bringing the number of slayings this year to 209 — a 24% increase from this point last year.
D.C. didn’t witness its 200th homicide last year until Dec. 27. It’s the third year in a row the city has recorded more than 200 homicides, a feat not seen in nearly two decades.
Violent crime overall is up 37% this year, with large year-over-year increases in robberies (up 65%) and carjackings (up 103%) being major contributors to the chaos.
Tuesday’s killings followed a weekend where a man was gunned down inside a nightclub on H Street in the Northeast area of D.C. Three other people were injured in the shooting.
The victim, 31-year-old Blake Bozeman, was a husband and father of three. He played basketball at Baltimore’s Morgan State University, where he graduated in 2015.
“We saw him that day. He came by that morning with the children,” Mr. Bozeman’s father, Todd, told local Fox affiliate WTTG. “I got people calling me, telling me to ‘Be strong.’ What does that mean? That’s my baby boy — my only one.”
D.C. politicians tried to address violent crime by passing emergency legislation this past summer that gave judges greater leeway to keep adult and juvenile suspects behind bars ahead of their trials.
The temporary law expires Oct. 18.
Brooke Pinto, Ward 2 Democrat, proposed legislation last week that would enshrine that emergency power in law.
She also proposed that former gun offenders can be subjected to warrantless searches at any time by D.C. police while out on parole and would require judges to write memos explaining why they released defendants pretrial.
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.