Columbia Heights

In case you hadn’t heard this yet.  From Council Member Jim Graham:

Dear Friends, At approximately 11:30 am, Target received a call there is an explosive device in the building. An off duty MPD officer working at Target received the call and reported it to Management.

Management has evacuated the building as a result of what MPD says was a phone threat. 200 persons have been evacuated. I have spoken personally to the MPD officers who are in charge of the sweep. They see this as very possibly routine they are taking all due precautions. The dogs are entering the building now.

Explosive Ordinance Division (EOD) with the MPD is on the scene. 14th St has been closed between Irving St. and Park Rd.

Inspector Delgado has advised the EOD sweep of the building will take approximately 45 minutes.

Bests, Councilmember Jim Graham

Following is the incredible story of the shooting at 14th and Fairmont that took place on August 16, 2008. Chris Henderson is a local freelance writer, and you can find more of her work at www.justacouplequestions.blogspot.com. Ed. note: Names with an asterisk have been changed to protect the identity of minors.

A shooting, a fight, and a clash of realities

By Chris Henderson

At 7:35 p.m. on August 16, 2008 the sun sparkled down on the tail end of a beautiful Saturday afternoon in Columbia Heights. Just down the street from the new DC USA mall, the sidewalks around the split intersection of 14th and Fairmont Street NW were carpeted with teen-agers and kids, walking, hanging out, chatting and playing in the 83-degree weather. Upstairs I sat by my window revising a blog post and enjoying the abundant sunshine in my room.

Then there were two loud, sharp pops, deeper than fireworks. Then three or four more, and as I got up to look, the deluge began.

Everywhere across the intersection bodies ducked, twisted to look, then ran, flooding down toward my half of the split intersection. Half of them suddenly paused, reacting to something, then sprinted further down the street or melted into the buildings. All the while I counted, automatically, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-oh shit that’s not just one gun—split-second pause—1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-those shots are too close together and they’re not stopping—the phone was in my hand to dial 911 and suddenly the barrage stopped. A couple of shots had been followed by the sharp ping of metal on metal, and somewhere in there I thought I remembered hearing tires speeding away on pavement. My phone read 7:38 p.m.

As the operator picked up, I watched one security guard run across 14th street and jog back. A second guard darted diagonally across the intersection, looked, then suddenly booked it back, hunched as if he expected more shots to follow him. None came. My roommate remembered him yelling “he’s down!” or “get down!”

On the phone the operator kept asking me how many shots were fired. I could only answer, over and over, “I don’t know. There were so many. We need police here NOW!” The first squad cars rushed the intersection as I told her my address. I got off the phone, took a breath, then grabbed a camera and ran to the elevator.

I didn’t know that the shocked silence downstairs was only the intermission.

About five minutes earlier, Jerome* was walking from Malcolm X Park with his friends. As he turned to go up 14th Street, he saw an “all-black car, tinted windows, tinted windshield, black rims” turn off of Euclid onto University Place, driving toward Fairmont Street.

As they walked up the east side of 14th street toward the intersection with Fairmont, Jerome remembers seeing the car on the 1400 block of Fairmont Street. He said someone in the car “threw something out the window and shot four times.” When the shooting started, Jerome remembers one of his friends somehow jumped the side fence of the Faircliff Plaza East Apartments at 1350 Fairmont Street; another grabbed his bike and rode off north toward the new Target. As Jerome watched, “people were shooting back, then the car started moving around… it whipped through the intersection… then drove off” down Fairmont Street. He also remembered a man hiding behind the electrical box on his side of the intersection while someone shot at him.

Jerome said he had time to walk back to his house, midway down the 1300 block of Fairmont Street, before anything else happened.

Britney* was coming down the stairs of 1401 Fairmont Street when “a gold car came by” and she heard shooting. The wall next to the building is a popular hangout since it offers a long row of seating, and some teen-agers she knew were out there. She heard what she thought was “a machine gun, I don’t know, cuz all you hear is brrrrrr.” Britney said, “the car people shot first,” then the people sitting on the wall “started shootin’ back at them.” She said two main people were involved, but “ain’t nobody innocent.”

As soon as the shooting stopped she joined others gathered on the porch. She found out someone had been hit.

Leander* was walking from the new Recreation Center on Girard Street when he saw a “goldish car” with a black top and dark tinted windows, big “like a Cadillac.” It paused by a white house at the intersection of University Place and Fairmont Street. He remembered it being full of people, “way more than four.” He said it sped up to go down the block, then slowed down as it got near the wall next to 1401 Fairmont. “I heard gun shots and I ducked… I hit the ground before I thought about it.”

Leander remembered seeing his cousin get hit by a bullet, and said “he ran, and his brother backed him up, started shootin’.” He also saw “a guy shootin’ at something, right there by the gate” in front of the wall by 1401 Fairmont. “He was wearing a pale blue shirt.” Leander remembered a man in a red shirt as well, and thought that the two shooters in front of 1401 Fairmont may have been shooting at the man in the red shirt as well as the car.

He said the “SPOs” or “special police” from the Faircliff Apartment complex came over, saw the boy who had been shot, and started chasing the brother who had been shooting back.

Two other people remembered seeing the same man in a red shirt that Leander described. A man from the New Amsterdam Apartments who gave his name as John said he saw a man in a red shirt and blue jeans run down to Euclid street, while another person ran past the building into the alley.

A second man who declined to give his name said the shooting was not a drive-by, “it was three guys shootin’ at each other.” From his window, he saw “two guys shooting” at a guy in a red shirt. “Dude in the red shirt was running away… thataway,” he said, and pointed down Fairmont Street. “He was takin’ off his shirt as he was runnin’.” He said the man in the red shirt had sheltered behind an electrical box during part of the shooting.

Sertira Wilson, former ANC Commissioner and founder of the 1400 Fairmont Street tenant’s association, also remembered seeing “a gold car with a black top” coming down Fairmont Street just as she drove off to go to the store. She recognized the car as belonging to a woman whom neighbors on the block associated with a local drug dealer, a man who she said “has been giving these young boys these guns.” She also said the car was parked in the parking lot of 1401 Fairmont Street.

When Wilson heard that the son of the car’s owner had been talking about the shooting, and heard a white couple describe the boys “jumping out of the car” to shoot at the arrested man and others sitting in front of 1401 Fairmont Street, she put two and two together.

Wilson described a contentious relationship between one of the men who was arrested as a possible shooter and the drug dealer. While she knew the arrested man had a record, she insisted that “he works, he has kids” and had turned away from his past. She alleged that the drug dealer “has had it out for him and several of the other guys in the neighborhood who had told the kids to stay away from him.” While Wilson had not been happy that the arrested man still carried a gun, she admitted “he saved his self and his brother’s life” by returning fire when people started shooting at them.

She said she and other parents had tried to warn police about the alleged drug dealer in the past, but each time he was arrested “the next day he’d be back out on the street.” Wilson remembered overhearing the man describe himself as a “high-priced snitch,” and bragging that “police can’t touch me,” which she said meant that he would turn in boys who tried to get out of the drug business and earn immunity for himself at the same time.

Another person came forward to anonymously point out the woman who allegedly owned the car. Leander also indicated the alleged drug dealer as being involved, although he did not identify him as being a drug dealer.

The “Mob”

When I walked outside an ice cream truck had pulled up in front of my building, looking very forlorn without the usual crowd of children. A woman was telling another bystander that there must have been “at least a hundred shots fired,” and that you could tell from “that smell of smoke, you can smell it in the air!” Two police cars were on the scene, and a third drove up as I started snapping photos; my camera recorded the first picture at 7:44 p.m.

I crossed the street looking for bullet holes. As I walked south on 14th, a tall teenage boy with a kind of dazed expression walked slowly toward me, a white undershirt pulled up unevenly on his chest. I thought it must just be some weird teenage style, but then I noticed he had blood smeared on his abs and his arm, and he seemed to be pressing a dark rolled-up t-shirt against one side of his waist. Numerous sources later told me that he had been shot in the hand. He passed me and walked up to an officer.

(A close-up of the bullet hole in the electrical box. One source said that a man in a red shirt, possibly one of the shooters, took cover behind this box. Timestamp: 7:46 p.m.) Story continues after the jump. (more…)