Shaw shooting victim identified as 13-year-old boy

The teen boy who was shot and killed in D.C.’s Shaw neighborhood Sunday afternoon has been identified by the police.

Malachi Lukes, 13, of Northwest, was shot around 2 p.m. in the 600 block of S Street NW. He died later at the hospital, the police said.

A second shooting victim was taken to the hospital for non-life threatening injuries.

D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham said the shooting does not appear to be random and is believed to have occurred during a dispute.

“Whenever you have a shooting like this, people get unsettled,” Newsham told reporters. “So what we can do as a police department is do everything we possibly can to find the folks who are responsible, and then we’ll be hopeful that the rest of the criminal justice system will hold them accountable for it.”

No weapon was recovered at the scene, Newsham said.

There’s isn’t any evidence suggesting the shooting was part of a robbery, but Newsham said the investigation is ongoing.

The shooting comes days after D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser addressed gun violence in the city, saying, “We as a nation have to get serious about illegal guns and gun violence.”

Police are offering a reward up to $25,000 for information that leads to an arrest and conviction in the case.

Anyone with information about this case is asked to call the police at 202-727-9099. Additionally, anonymous information may be submitted to the department’s TEXT TIP LINE by sending a text message to 50411.

WTOP’s Scott Gelman contributed to this report.

Will Vitka

William Vitka is a Digital Writer/Editor for WTOP.com. He's been in the news industry for over a decade. Before joining WTOP, he worked for CBS News, Stuff Magazine, The New York Post and wrote a variety of books—about a dozen of them, with more to come.

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