The W.Times is reporting on a disturbing trend: Kids in the District are being shot and killed at an alarming rate. While this isn’t necessarily anything new, the article presents some sobering gun crime statistics.
So far, 17 youths under the age of 18 have been killed this year compared with a total of 12 last year. Almost 15 percent of the District’s homicide victims this year have been children, and most of them were fatally shot.
Late Sunday, a two teenage girls and one boy were wounded in a drive-by shooting on Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. following a party. The W.Times says that the latest shooting “threatens to overshadow this year’s decrease of crime throughout the city.”
Last month, Metropolitan Police Chief Charles Ramsey declared an emergency crime alert which mobilized area police to attack the recent rash of juvenile car thefts/joy-riding, which has led to a number of deaths in the city.
