An employee with the D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation has been charged with second-degree murder in connection with the fatal shooting of 13-year-old Karon Blake earlier this month. Jason Lewis turned himself in to the Metropolitan Police Department this morning, according to a police spokesperson. He appeared in D.C. Superior Court Tuesday afternoon and a judge ordered him held without bond as he awaits trial, multiple news outlets reported.

The Washington Post first reported the news of charges against Lewis.

In a statement, Lewis’s attorney said his client maintains his innocence.

“While this is certainly a tragedy, once all the facts are heard, I believe that a jury will find that there was no crime here,” wrote Lee Smith III, Lewis’s lawyer, in a statement. “Mr. Lewis has dedicated his career to mentoring and supporting youth in the District of Columbia, which only adds to how distraught he is over the death of Karon Blake. Mr. Lewis and his family offer heartfelt condolences to Karon’s family and other loved ones.”

Lewis fatally shot Karon on Jan. 7 after he allegedly saw the teenager and possibly two others breaking into cars parked near the intersection of Quincy St. and Michigan Ave NE around 4 a.m. At the time, police shared few details about the shooting, but said that a resident “heard noises and observed someone that appeared to be tampering with vehicles.” The resident then left his home with a registered firearm, had some sort of interaction with Karon, and subsequently shot him, police said. Karon suffered multiple gunshot wounds, according to a police report. He died later that morning. Police have said there was no evidence Karon was armed.

Karon’s death prompted an outpouring of grief and anger, particularly as police declined until now to arrest Lewis or publicly reveal his name. At a crowded meeting at the Turkey Thicket Recreation Center earlier this month, near the block where he was shot, residents demanded that D.C. police arrest the man responsible and identify him. Karon’s relatives and neighbors at the meeting questioned why a person would use fatal force to respond to an alleged property crime, and called it an act of “vigilantism.” Others took to social media to defend the shooter’s alleged actions.

At the time, authorities declined to offer any additional information about the killing, citing an ongoing investigation.

Now, an affidavit supporting Lewis’s arrest, made public by the U.S. Attorney for D.C. on Tuesday, offers further detail about what the police department’s investigation ultimately surfaced.

When police arrived at the scene, they found Lewis performing CPR on Karon, the affidavit notes. Lewis told police that he shot Karon after the boy ran toward him, and that he fired only two shots. But police later determined that Lewis actually fired three shots, the first one aimed at another person on the scene who was sitting in a nearby car.

That information was a key turning point in the investigation, Police Chief Robert Contee said on Tuesday, because it showed that Lewis had fired a shot in a situation where it appeared he could not have been under immediate threat.

“The first shot that was fired was actually fired at someone who was sitting in a vehicle who was not an immediate threat to the person who fired the shot,” Contee said at a press conference on Tuesday. “That in itself raises issues.”

The affidavit also provided information about what happened leading up to Lewis’s confrontation with Karon.

According to surveillance footage police obtained, an unspecified number of people arrived to the alley near Lewis’s residence in a Kia Sportage, later determined to be a stolen vehicle. Two of them got out of the car and began approaching some cars in the area with a flashlight, the footage showed.

At that point, Lewis exited his home. One of the people at the scene fled towards the Kia Sportage as Lewis fired a first shot at the car, according to the police investigation. A second person, later identified as Karon, also began running away, and then changed direction. In his initial interviews with police, Lewis claimed that Karon was running directly towards him. But the account from police, based on their review of surveillance footage, only says that Karon was running in front of Lewis’s home. An officer who viewed footage from a camera that captured the front of Lewis’s home said it did not show Karon coming onto his property.

The surveillance footage also captured Karon’s final words as Lewis fired shots at him. He said “I’m sorry,” “please don’t,” and “no” many times, according to the footage. And he yelled, “I am a kid” and “I am only 12.”

The only gun police found at the scene belonged to Lewis, police said.

Police recovered three bullet casing from the scene and the medical examiner’s office confirmed that Karon died from multiple gunshot wounds, according to the affidavit.

“Any time we have a loss of life, especially a child, that’s something that just really pierces my soul,” Contee said Tuesday. “Here we have a kid who is dead who shouldn’t be.”

Loved ones described Karon as a “playful, crazy little kid just running around the house” — just like any other young boy. His middle school librarian described him as a “library kid,” a child who was always reading.

Attorneys with expertise in D.C.’s laws around guns and self-defense say these cases are very fact-specific and open to interpretation.

Contee said he was comfortable with how long it took to bring charges against Lewis, given his experience with criminal cases.

“We wanted to be methodical, we wanted to be correct and not make any assumptions. We wanted to follow the evidence. It was somewhat of a self-defense claim that needed to be overcome,” he said. “We wanted to get to the bottom of this.”

But in a statement issued Tuesday, Ward 5 Councilmember Zachary Parker said he “continue[d] to have serious questions about the handling of this case.”

“It took almost one month to press charges, during which the Ward 5 community was given few answers, allowing misinformation and speculation to spread,” Parker said in the statement. “Community members understandably have questions about whether justice would have come swifter if Karon’s background and circumstances were different, or if Jason Lewis was not an employee of the District of Columbia.”

“Karon should still be here,” Parker went on. “This charge and subsequent trial will not bring him back to us.”

This story was updated with comment from D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee and Ward 5 Councilmember Zachary Parker, information from a police affidavit, and the news that Jason Lewis was ordered held without bond.