A Weekend Of Violence

An uptick in crime during a holiday weekend is hardly shocking, but an unsolved violent crime so close to a center of activity on a busy Friday night is still slightly unnerving. We first got word of a shooting near the intersection of 13th Street and W Street NW from Mike DeBonis' twitter feed; Loose Lips reported that two Hispanic males had been shot, and that three suspects were on the run, heading west on W Street.

DCist's own Kriston Capps, though, paints a much more hectic picture of the fray:

Some friends and I were stooping on Friday night and heard the shots (though I thought it was an engine backfiring). Chaos ensued: The sirens of police and ambulance came from everywhere, while helicopters for the shooter and shooters. Police were sprinting along Florida Avenue between 13th and 14th, occasionally shining flashlights down into the basement of my neighbors (where no murderers live to my knowledge). It seemed that the shooters had fled on foot but police didn't appear to know where -- they were searching all over. Several of my friends agreed: If we were suspects at large in my neighborhood on a Friday night, we'd try to blend into the bookstore at Busboys.

There still hasn't been a resolution into the shooting as of this posting.

But that's hardly the extent of the violent crime which has packed our normally bare RSS coffers this weekend. A 21-year-old man was shot in the chest at 5018 Rock Creek Church Rd. NE on Saturday after trying to break up a robbery at a grocery store. Here's a charming story about a trio who broke into a home in Fairfax County and proceeded to beat the residents with bats and a machete. We haven't even scratched the surface the vehicular crimes this weekend: a Bethesda woman who was killed in a hit-and-run, and the man who was killed on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway after being hit by at least two cars while attempting to cross the offramp to New York Avenue.

Unsolved shootings, botched citizen policing, a machete gang, and multiple hit-and-runs? Hardly a relaxing Columbus Day for law enforcement.