Results tagged “deaths”

The man who was arrested and charged in the Nov. 14 killing of 9-year-old Oscar Fuentes has been found dead inside his cell in the D.C. Jail, according to a report from WTTG/FOX5. Josue Pena, 26, had been charged with first-degree murder in the death of Fuentes, who died after being shot through the door of his Columbia Heights apartment. The Washington Post reported earlier that paramedics had been called to the jail for a call of an unconscious inmate this afternoon. WTTG says Pena was found hanged inside his cell just after 1 p.m. He was pronounced dead later at Howard University Hospital, with the cause of death determined to be cardiac arrest by asphyxiation. The report also includes these details:

Pena told prosecutors he had a gun in his waist band, but it accidently went off as he walked up the stairs.

Continue reading "Suspect in 9-Year-Old's Murder Found Dead in D.C. Jail"

A man was struck and killed by a Franconia-Springfield-bound Blue line train at the McPherson Square station at around 8:35 p.m. this evening, according to Metro spokesperson Angela Gates. No details are yet available on the identity of the victim. The station is currently closed while police investigate. WMATA has established shuttle bus service between Farragut West and Federal Triangle. Preliminary reports indicate witnesses saw the man place himself on the tracks intentionally. We'll update when we have more details. (UPDATED at 9:27 p.m.) Metro says the McPherson Square station is expected to be open for regular service on Tuesday morning. (UPDATED again at 11:07 p.m.)

Two Prince William County teens who were found dead in a Triangle, Va. home on Monday died as the result of a suicide pact, the Post is reporting. Police say they may never know what prompted to Desiree Patrick, 17, and Quirinius Williams, 18, to kill themselves together, but these comments from Williams' stepfather, Ruben Aguilar, are fairly haunting:

Aguilar said he had never met Patrick but had received a phone call from her father about a year ago about the relationship. After that conversation, Aguilar said, "we made sure to tell them to stay away from each other." From all appearances, Williams complied.

Continue reading "Saddest Story of the Day: Teens Died in Suicide Pact"

Another sad death to report at the Smithsonian's National Zoo. Merlin, the Zoo's oldest male sloth bear, died this morning after a 48-hour illness, according to a news release. He was 28 years old.

On Monday morning, Nov. 2, he underwent a routine physical examination. Although the examination went well, his anesthetic recovery was prolonged, and he had not returned to normal by the afternoon. While under observation, veterinarians noticed that he had vomited some blood-tinged fluid.

Continue reading "National Zoo's Elderly Sloth Bear Dies"

Sad news for the local restaurant community today. NoraNori Amaya, co-owner of popular U Street restaurant Coppi's Organic, was found dead Monday night in her apartment in the 3600 block of 16th Street NW, NBCWashington.com is reporting. A call to Coppi's this afternoon confirmed the news, though a restaurant spokesperson declined to comment any further at this time.

The Smithsonian’s National Zoo on Friday announced the recent deaths of two scimitar-horned oryx. One female died at the main Zoo campus on Oct. 24, while a male passed away on Oct. 14 at the Conservation and Research Center in Front Royal.

D.C. Police say they are investigating two fatal shootings that happened overnight in Northeast.

As if the drive-by shooting Tuesday at the Clay Terrace housing projects, which left two teens dead and three others wounded, wasn't tragic enough, the Washington Post is citing police sources today who indicate that one of the slain victims, 15-year-old Davonta Artis, was an innocent bystander. Preliminary word from D.C. police is that the drive-by resulted from a dispute between two rival crews, from 37th Place SE and Clay Terrace, over a set of stolen handguns. Artis, according to the Post, appears to have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The tortured case of the beating death of gay Maryland man Tony Hunter has at last drawn to a close, as D.C. Superior Court Judge Rafael Diaz sentenced defendant Robert Hannah, 19, to 180 days in jail on Wednesday, the Washington Blade reports. The sentence represents the maximum jail time allowable for Hannah's conviction on a misdemeanor assault charge. Hannah will also get credit for time served, the Blade says, which is about two months already. Hunter's mother told the paper she was "not pleased" with the outcome. There has been much public outcry on the reduced charges to which Hannah eventually was allowed to plead guilty, but ultimately a grand jury did not find sufficient evidence to pursue a manslaughter charge. Friends of the victim have maintained that Hunter was beaten in an unprovoked attack that may have been an anti-gay incident.

UPDATE 9:20 p.m. We can now confirm that the second victim has in fact died. The Post has also updated its story.

For those of you following yesterday's broad daylight double shooting in Southwest, one of the victims is now reported to have died. From the Post's Paul Duggan: "The slaying victim was identified as Chicquelo Abeny of Southwest Washington. Police did not identify the second victim because he survived the shooting and is considered a witness." Police are still not offering any ideas as to a motive in the shootings, but Ward 6's Tommy Wells is already tweeting up a storm about setting up a community meeting "to determine if they are retalitory [sic] shootings or unrelated incidences."

The woman who was struck by a Metrobus in Trinidad on Monday evening has died, according to D.C. Police. The victim, who has been identified as Stephanie Richardson, 61, of the 1600 block of 11th Place NE, died at just after 4 p.m. Tuesday afternoon.

A man died late Saturday night or early Sunday morning at 1618 14th Street NW, both Borderstan and The Sexist are reporting, at a venue which is known to host late-night sex parties for gay and bisexual men. D.C. Police say a preliminary investigation does not indicate foul play, so they have released very little information about the man's identity or a potential cause of death. One commenter at Borderstan wrote that the man fell down a flight of stairs, but we have been unable to confirm that. A 2005 Metro Weekly story details a fire that broke out at the venue that year, which is said to host regular '''Men's Parties'' and gatherings of the Jack Off Enthusiasts of Washington and Baltimore.'

A house fire in the 3000 block of O Street NW claimed the life of an elderly woman on Friday evening, as the Post reports. Former Nathan's proprietor Carol Joynt has photos and a remembrance up on her web site, noting that few neighbors knew the woman's name even though she had lived on the block for so many years. "It struck us dumb that her home was in the middle of our block, we saw her occasionally, we knew she was elderly, virtually a shut in, seemingly eccentric, but we didn’t know her name, or of her family or anything about her that could help the investigators. It was the saddest component of a catastrophically sad day."

Not much more to report at this time on the body found this morning at the Capital Yacht Club, located in the 900 block of Water St. in Southwest. D.C. Fire/EMS spokesperson Pete Piringer was able to confirm that the body, which was found near Pier 5 at about 9 a.m., was that of an adult woman, and not a man as had been initially reported. D.C. Police confirm that they are investigating, but could offer no details.

The Post is reporting that Robert Hannah has indeed pleaded guilty on simple assault charges in the beating death of Tony Hunter. Word of a plea agreement in the case first leaked out two weeks ago, which prompted D.C. Council member Phil Mendelson to fire off a letter to Acting U.S. Attorney Channing Phillips, urging him to take the case to trial. The deal, it turns out, came about because Hannah was arrested for shoplifting last month for allegedly trying to steal items from an H&M, according to the Post. In exchange for his guilty plea, the shoplifting charge was dropped. Hannah's case has been controversial since the original charges against him were reduced from a felony to misdemeanor, based on his assertion that he only hit Hunter, a gay Maryland man, because Hunter sexually assaulted him before the attack. A friend of Hunter's who was with him at the time has maintained that Hannah's actions were unprovoked. Hannah will be sentenced on Oct. 14. He faces a maximum of 180 days in jail.

The Metro Transit Police Department has identified the man who was fatally struck by a Red Line train on Sunday morning as Joshua Fueston, 19, of Bellingham, WA. A preliminary investigation indicated Fueston placed himself in the path of the train just before 8 a.m., but Metro Transit Police continues to investigate. The aftermath of the incident caused major delays on the Red Line until just after 11 a.m. on Sunday.

At-large D.C. Council member Phil Mendelson today sent a letter to acting U.S. Attorney Channing Phillips urging him to "please reconsider and proceed to trial" with Robert Hannah, the man accused in the beating death of Tony Hunter. Hannah has reportedly been in talks to reach a plea agreement with the U.S. Attorney's Office.

The Metro subcontractor who died last week at the Bladensburg bus garage had touched a live wire that caused him to be electrocuted, according to what Metro told the Post. Metro Transit Police are conducting an investigation into the death of Steven Troy Griffith, 30, of Chantilly, and the medical examiner's office has yet to determine an official cause of death.

WJLA has the ID of the man who was found dead inside a Pizza Mart in Edgewood on Tuesday: 44-year-old Shahabuddin Rana, of Silver Spring, Md., was a co-owner of the pizza shop with his brother. Police are still holding back on a specific cause of death, but they are treating it as a homicide and have alluded to some kind of trauma to the body. That Pizza Mart is a 24-7 carryout operation, and it appears the killer must have entered the store at some point overnight on Monday night and attacked Rana.

A body was discovered at the Pizza Mart located at the corner of 4th and Adams Streets NE earlier this afternoon. D.C. Police investigators responded to 2300 4th Street NE at approximately 12:47 p.m. to investigate the death. No details on yet from the police on the identity of the deceased or a cause of death.

1. There's a cracked rail on the Red Line, between Friendship Heights and Bethesda, because Red Line riders don't already have enough to deal with. Trains are single-tracking this afternoon between Grosvenor and Friendship Heights while temporary repairs are made, causing 15 minute delays. A more permanent rail replacement will be performed tonight after Metro closes.
2. A subcontractor who was installing wiring for a new air compressor at Metro’s Bladensburg Bus Garage in Northeast died earlier today after apparently being electrocuted.
3. DC Fire/EMS were called to a fire on the tracks at the Deanwood station earlier today. The small fire was quickly put out by a Metro maintenance crew.

At least six people were shot in four separate shooting incidents overnight, WJLA is reporting. One of the victims, who was shot in the head near the intersection of Irving and 24th Streets SE, died of his injuries, while another is said to be in critical condition after a shooting in the 1800 block of Birney Place SE. Four other people suffered non life-threatening injures. The other two shooting incidents took place in the 2600 block of Stanton Road SE and the 200 block of W Street NW.

You have to sit through an intro from NBC4's Pat Collins to get to it, but this recently released video of D.C. police interviewing Banita Jacks shortly after her arrest truly is chilling, though not for the reasons we expected. Jacks definitely appears to be weak and tired (she had by all accounts been starving herself, too) but what we found most startling was how lucid she actually seems. Given the nature of the crime, we were expecting the rantings of a woman who had little to no grasp on reality, but Jacks actually speaks to detectives in even tempered, complete thoughts, noting that she knows what the discovery of the bodies of her four daughters must look like to police, and explaining that she didn't seek out help when her daughters started dying because she "knew that this was going to happen ... a bunch of trouble for me."

Well this is absolutely horrible. A 76-year old Southeast D.C. man died earlier this week after being attacked and beaten by two young men, WJLA is reporting.

Clarence Dews was walking along Martin Luther King Avenue when two guys ran him down with a bicycle before slamming him over the head with a club. He died a few days later from blunt force trauma.

Continue reading "Elderly Man Dies After Random Attack"

Breaking news from the Washington Post:

A D.C. Superior Court judge on Wednesday found Banita Jacks guilty of killing her four daughters in a case that shook the region for its cruelty.

Continue reading "Banita Jacks Found Guilty of Murdering Her Daughters"

The press secretary to Ward 2 D.C. Council member Jack Evans has been found dead in Baltimore Harbor, NBC4's Tom Sherwood is reporting.

Sources tell DCist that the death toll has risen back up to nine, after two more bodies were discovered in the wreckage this morning. The total number of bodies still trapped in trains before 10 a.m. was therefore five, but the Post is reporting that all of them have since been removed. Four other bodies were already in the morgue.