July 3, 2008
Journalist Shot in Adams Morgan
We mentioned it briefly at the end of the day yesterday and it's been reported several other places since then, but we wanted to share some more details on how our good friend Brian Beutler was shot early Wednesday morning in Adams Morgan. Brian, 25, is the Washington Correspondent for the Media Consortium, a network of progressive news organizations like Mother Jones and the American Prospect. He's being described as a "well known liberal blogger" and while that's not incorrect, Brian is a hardnosed reporter. You can read some of his work here.
The story goes like this: Brian and his friend Matt had a few drinks at the Black Cat on Tuesday night. Brian sent out a Twitter that he was heading over to the bar just before midnight, and he and Matt were there for a little under two hours before deciding to walk to The Diner in Adams Morgan to get something to eat. While cutting across Euclid Street between 16th and 17th Streets NW, the two men were approached by who they've described as two black male teenagers, one of whom was wielding a small handgun. They demanded their wallets and cell phones, but before Brian and Matt had a chance to make sense of what was going on, one of the teens fired several shots and Brian was hit. Matt called 911, and Brian was taken to Washington Hospital Center, where his entire spleen was removed. He's expected to make a full recovery.
There's currently some question as to how many bullets injured Brian. At first we all heard that he had been shot three times -- once in the abdomen and twice in the shoulder. It now appears that Brian's shoulder injuries may not have been caused by a bullet wound, so he may have only been shot once or twice.
No suspects have been arrested. Acting Third District Police Commander George Kucik told us that detectives are reviewing crime camera footage from the corner of 17th and Euclid to determine if the suspects ever walked past the area of the camera prior to or after the shooting.
A few of us went down to the hospital to give blood yesterday, including myself and Music Editor Amanda Mattos, and we were able to see Brian afterward. He was awake, in some pain and on morphine, and making jokes about how other friends of his had already sent flowers, and we had arrived empty handed. Brian still had the red Black Cat stamp on his hand from his visit to the Red Room. Despite having a lot of tubes coming in and out of his body, he looked remarkably well. His main concern was that no one should be overly worried about him. He asked us to make sure everyone knew he was going to be fine.
Brian's friends are working on putting together a benefit concert to help him defray some of his medical bills and lost work time. You can be sure to hear more about that on this web site.
Photo of Brian Beutler courtesy former DCist Catherine Andrews. And yeah, that's half of my face to the left and Catherine to the right.
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That really is a shame. Glad he is going to be ok. Scary because I have been in the exact situation he was in so many times before in terms of making that walk. Ugggg.
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Bunch of fucking savages in this town.
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if only Brian had been in his home at the time. he could have had a shootout with his mugger using his newly acquired handgun. i think DC should allow concealed weapons too so we can take the law into our own hands (and also hang out near the 7 Eleven and eat doughnuts).
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Good to know he's going to be okay. Here's hoping for a speedy recovery and a quick arrest.
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i know mcgillicuddy is being facetious with the gun comments, but there are a lot of people making comments on other sites that are carrying this story about how "if he was armed this wouldn't have happened."
does anyone think that's true? are the thugs going to be scared of regular joe's packing heat, or will the city just turn into a giant shooting parlor? i'm starting to think that we could end up with a little of both.
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One block over on 18th you can basically walk with ease, it's well lit, semi cop heavy and though there are still problems you are least likely to encounter two idiot teens with guns. Why don't the cops hang out back there as well? Frustrating. I don't know this guy but definitely sorry it had to happen. F this S**t.
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This is really sad and it occurred only blocks from my house. I walk by that intersection at night all the time.
Even sadder, if the police catch the teenagers that did this, nothing will happen to them in DC juvenile justice system, they are rarely charged as adults.
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i think if the DC police were actually worth their weight in pig shit, this wouldn't have happened. in the meantime i'll stick to walking on the main roads and giving people the evil eye as i walk past them.
ps - good to hear Brian is on his way to recovery. i'd bring him a Guinness if the hospital would allow it.
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Euclid St., well-known danger area. Not to blame the victim, and I'm truly sorry this happened, but people need to be streetwise and avoid trouble spots.
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Jeebus. I only live a block or so from there on 16th between Euclid and Fuller.
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@ LiliMoon
Really? Because I've walked on the street numerous times without incident. Your comment is quite a passive-aggressive attempt to blame the victim despite your assertion otherwise. The "trouble spots" that people have been mugged, shot at and/or killed lately have been places anywhere from Northeast to Friendship to Downtown. It can happen ANYWHERE.
As for anyone who thinks a gun would've helped this situation, it takes only a second to go for a gun in your pocket, but a nanosecond for a scared mugger to shoot you in the spine. I don't know if Brian tried to be a hero like Rusty from IHateDC, but it's a good bet if you comply with a mugger, you won't get shot. That's not always the case, but I like those odds better than trying to argue wi
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As I said in a previous comment thread, the corner of 17th and Euclid is hopeless, and has not changed in years despite all that's going on around it. If certain families are providing support for the criminals who plague this location, they should be removed from their houses (and I say this as a good but frustrated liberal) under some trumped up eminent domain call by the city, and it should be turned over to law-abiding, low income residents. Why not make it middle class police/teacher/librarian housing?
And why don't the police ever catch any of these armed robbers!? They don't respond quickly enough, and don't canvass the area quickly enough afterwards to catch anyone. After a murder on Irving Street in 2003, I watched them take their sweet time about setting up a perimeter, trying to block off escape routes, etc. They never made an arrest in that case, despite my following up with MPD and being told they "knew who did it."
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*supposed to read "with a mugger." at the end there.
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This could have been any one of us...
We'd be happy to promote the benefit concert too. Please be in touch if we can help.
http://vinyldistrict.blogspot.com/
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Having been latex-gloves-deep in a shooting victim quite a few times this year, (it's a shooty summer in Seat Pleasant,) I can confirm that this in factwould not have happened if Beutler had been armed. One of two other outcomes would have happened.
1) *Everyone* would have been shot (mugger, Beutler, friend)
2) Just Beutler would have been killed and the muggers would have stolen his gun.
Sorry to damage anyone's adolescent fantasies of a handgun being a useful thing for Joe Citizen.
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freshyill - do you live in the Art Deco roachpit known as The Century? I used to live there, too.
DC is an extremely unsafe city. Period.
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The problem here has to do with a crack house that is dealing dope on the corner of 17th and Euclid -- clients mug people there to pay for their rock. The cops are aware of the house's operations and have intermittently posted a police car there (It was there when I parked on the same block Tuesday evening)
What to do? It is an old story -- I suspect that doing the sophisticated surveillance needed for warrants that could seize dope and arrest dealers is too expensive, or something like that.
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Oh, BTW, for the kind of goons that mug people, the concept that regular Joes might be packing a gun is at best irrelevant, at worst *awesome* because in their heads they will then have a *really cool gunfight* where they get to show how thug they are.
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IMGoph: I think particularly in a situation like this, it would not have done a bit of good for the victim to have been armed. Generally whoever has their piece out and shoots first is going to win. If a mugger pulls his gun at you, are you really swift and crafty enough to unholster, draw, and aim your concealed weapon, then fire the first shot or scare him/her away before you get shot yourself? Personally, if I were a mugger, the idea of my victim being armed wouldn't scare me off, because I know that their wallet is far more accessible than their concealed weapon. And they'll probably be so scared anyways that their shooting won't be so great. If the victim is lucky, maybe someone in the vicinity will come to their aid, but I wouldn't rely on it.
So yeah, concealed carry freaks are kind of dumb. If you can't roll without a weapon, you need to find safer places to party.
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A staffer for Specter got mugged and his skull cracked open this last week near H and 13th NE. Not headline grabbing but still, scary upturn in crime going on here.
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@demonfafa
What sucks is that it's not a bad area during the day, but it's a magnet for bad people at night.
When I lived in New York, I commuted to Journal Square in Jersey City every day, and would sometimes work really odd hours. Journal Square is a shithole 24/7, but I never felt scared there, because there's nobody worth robbing there. It's not profitable. Contrast that with Hoboken, which is A LOT like Adams Morgan. A coworker of mine got roughed up and robbed there, because there are plenty of people to rob as soon as you get off the main strip.
I live extremely close to where this shooting happened. It feels unsafe. Not long ago I was walking home along Euclid after leaving 18th St. and I saw two guys walking my way at the opposite end of the block. I made a quick turn up 17th, and then RAN up to Fuller. It's shady.
I've taken my chances way too often there. From now on, I'm walking up to Columbia
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So when's Jim Graham gonna close Euclid and take their liquor license?
Oh, it's a street? I thought you meant Club Euclid, where the phat funky Pythagorean crew be layin down fresh geometries an' s**t.
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@SomeoneStoleMyScreenNameJason
Park Meridian. Right next door I think, but it's kind of behind that Swiss Embassy Cuban Interests Section building that always has a bunch of people hanging out in front in the morning.
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Good point, Monkey, Jim Graham should do something like that - close the infamous City Paper article crack house down. Not the street per se...
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There was a story in the city paper a few months ago about a guy also coming home from the black cat, also getting mugged and beaten just a couple of blocks away from where this latest incident occurred.
It is a violent area, but the reason it's a big story is the fact that it involves a white journalist. In Adams Morgan.
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If you were walking from the Black Cat to the Diner, why the hell would you take Euclid? It's out of the way.
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Is the crack house the one that has a flimsy wooden door with a hole in it? Pretty much all the other houses on the block are nice ones.. that one really stands out.
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Concealed weapon advocates: "The possibility of the victim carrying a gun will deter criminals."
Criminals: "Sweet! A free gun AND a wallet!"
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Re location who cares?? Fairly easy to get shot anywhere in DC...anyone remember last month a guy taking a couple bullets at 9 PM on a Sunday at Kalorama and 20th? Not exactly in front of a crack house..
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ADW Gun
SHIFT: MID
07/02/2008
07/02/2008
0154
UNK
1600 Euclid St NW
Sidewalk
303
08091060
Status: Open
C-1 and C-2 both report on the date time and location that they where approached by S-1 and S-2. S-2 then stated, "Give up the phones." C-2 then stated back to S-2, "You’re kidding, right?" S-2 then told S-1, "Get the gun." S-1 then produced a silver colored handgun and fired three shots at C-1. C-1 was struck in the shoulder, side and back area. C-2 was not shot. Both suspects were last seen going westbound from the location on foot into the 1600 blk of Euclid St. NW. C-1 suffered three gun shot wounds and was taken to med-star by ambul.#21 were he was admitted in stable condition. No property was obtained. Both suspects appeared to be juveniles.
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@demonfafa: your suggestion that "trouble spots" can be found anywhere (including Friendship Heights[!?]) is ridiculous. Look at crime maps, neighborhood listserves, whatever you want and see how many times 17th and Euclid comes up vs. how many times the most dangerous corner in Friendship Heights comes up.
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There is a crime camera a the corner of 17th & Euclid, but the incident happened out of the view of the camera, but MPD hopes the camera will show the assailants coming or going from the scene.
FYI bitch and moan all you want about 17th & Euclid, but there were four ADW's (assault with a deadly weapon) on 18th street last weekend....
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I live there. I feel pretty much just as safe there as I do anywhere else in DC. We live in a city. You are going to take risks walking around at night. This could have happened anywhere. You are hearing so much about it because it's a popular white journalist near Adams Morgan where "everyone hangs out".
Contrary to popular belief, those of us on 17th & Euclid aren't in the midst of gun battles every night.
We even *GASP* all had a community picnic last weekend!
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if i were Steve Jobs and wanted to live up to my "genius" status, i'd be adding a gun to the iPhone right about now.
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It probably was an angry commenter.
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Thank you, Teddy.
I also live there, and have lived within a few blocks of there for 10 years. And the level of hyperbolic hysteria going on in some of these comment threads is pretty over the top. Like you said, makes it sound like a war zone over there. I'm not going to deny that there are problems, but the picture being painted by a lot of commenters is not an accurate one of my home.
My best wishes to Brian for a speedy recovery.
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Glad to hear he's gonna be OK. In other news, this "well known liberal blogger" is now a "well known conservative blogger."
My place is not too far from there. I always noticed that that particular corner always attracted more "local youths" than others nearby, but I could never figure out why. Learning there's a crackhouse there explains a lot, but it's still surprising.
It's certainly no war zone (the rest of the area is quite nice), and I never had any trouble on that street myself, but it seems that most muggings in the area are near that intersection, and every year or so, something major happens, like that drive-by several months back. If they could just clear that corner, it would pretty much take care of the entire neighborhood.
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There was always a sketchy element hanging around that block, no doubt. And I also recall seeing the parked police car at that intersection often during the day and at night. I used to live 2 blocks away and made that walk almost every weekend.
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