One person has died and eight others were injured after a shooting in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Northwest D.C. Sunday.
According to D.C. police, the shooting happened just before 5 p.m. on 14th Street and Spring Road.
Police said a woman and eight men were taken to the hospital following the shooting. One of those men later died. Two others are in serious condition.
On Monday, police identified the deceased victim as 28-year-old Devin Peterson, a Northeast D.C. resident.
D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham and Mayor Muriel Bowser spoke to reporters from the scene Sunday night.
Newsham said police are looking for three men, two of whom were wearing black hooded jackets or sweatshirts. A third was wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt and black sweatpants with a white stripe.
“If anyone is out there and they saw something, please let us know,” Newsham said.
The police chief called the shooting “brazen daylight activity.”
“They’re putting everybody in this community at risk,” he said, noting that over the July 4 weekend, 11-year-old Davon McNeal was killed when he caught in the crossfire of a shooting in Southeast D.C.
Newsham said his department is familiar with some of the people in the group who were shot, and he called it a targeted shooting.
Two of the shooters were armed with long guns and one had a pistol, Newsham said.
Dozens of evidence markers were placed on the sidewalk next to shell casings behind yellow crime scene tape. A white plastic chair was toppled over and a bike could be seen thrown down on the sidewalk nearby.
“It’s ridiculous, it’s absolutely ridiculous that anyone would do that in broad daylight,” Newsham said, going on to reference McNeal’s death. “We can’t have that. Innocent people could get killed. You start shooting like this, there’s high potential that somebody else could get hit and very seriously hurt.”
Bowser said, “Everyone should be outraged. In the daytime, when people are frequenting our restaurants, frequenting our businesses. … Our team will work very hard to bring these people to justice.”
Investigators have already collected surveillance video from nearby businesses and some of the victims were also known to law enforcement, Newsham said.
Newsham also decried a rise in gun violence and said investigators were working diligently to try to keep violent crime down across the district.
So far, there have been 103 homicides in Washington in 2020, according to police statistics.
The neighborhood where the incident happened is shown in the map below.
WTOP’s Fonda Mwangi and Dan Friedell and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
