A trial is ongoing for the five girls who brutally beat 64-year-old Reggie Brown to death in Northwest D.C. last year.
Now, two of the five girls have pleaded guilty in Brown’s death, which happened along Georgia Avenue last October.
NBC Washington reporter and WTOP alum Paul Wagner joined WTOP’s Shawn Anderson and Anne Kramer to talk more about the developments in the case.
The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity.
Anne Kramer: Paul, thanks for joining us. What happened in court, in regards to this case, and where are we in this trial?
Paul Wagner: So we’re almost at the end of the government’s case. There was a lot of arguments between lawyers over what evidence could come in. What we did learn is that there was a woman who was approached by detectives and asked if she could identify any of the five girls that were caught on camera that night, walking up Georgia Avenue. Because there are certain rules that reporters have to abide by, I can’t say where this woman worked, but it is an interesting connection and she was able to identify two of the girls.
The other thing we learned is that the brutal beating that was actually recorded by one of the girls that night was actually emailed to the detective a couple of weeks after the beating, and he testified that that video was emailed to him by a social worker. It looks like Thursday is going to be very interesting, where we’ve been told that there’ll be some Instagram messages that will be shown to the judge, and we’re anticipating that that could be quite interesting.
Shawn Anderson: Now, it was just yesterday that you told us we had compelling and chilling testimony from a 15-year-old girl who had pleaded guilty and is now testifying against a couple of her friends. She explained the teens went out and attacked this man because they were “bored.” Tell us more about that.
Wagner: Yeah, that was pretty shocking. I got to say, sitting there in the courtroom, I didn’t know what to expect from this 15-year-old. She is locked up and will be locked up for three years, but she testified under a grant of immunity, and yes, Shawn and Anne, she said that she and her friends were out looking for someone to beat up that night. And when the prosecutor said, ‘Well, why? Why were you doing that?’ And she said, ‘We were bored.’
Now, there’s another major aspect of this case, and there was a man that actually instigated all of this. The detectives call him “Blue Coat” because they don’t know who he is. But Wednesday, we saw a video of him taking Reggie Brown across Georgia Avenue by the collar and then throwing him up against a wall at the Domino’s Pizza there at Sheridan Street. And that’s how this all began. This 15-year-old, who testified Tuesday, said that they had walked up to Blue Coat and asked if they could join in. Could they beat him up too? And Blue Coat said, ‘Sure.’ There had been previous testimony that Blue Coat had threatened the girls with a gun and said that if they didn’t join in, that he would shoot them.
But this 15-year-old testified that that did not happen. That was not correct. He never threatened them.
One other thing we did learn, too, is that a second girl has now pled guilty. It’s unclear what she’s pled guilty to. It happened during a status hearing, and so that wasn’t open to reporters. Of the five girls that are charged in this case, two have now pled guilty. Two are now on trial, and one more will go on trial next year.
Kramer: Curious if it’s in any court documents, anything that you’ve seen or heard, or if there’s any kind of connection to an organized crime or a gang, or are they just all friends?
Wagner: No, the testimony was that these were all friends. They hung out at a rec center. That was the testimony Tuesday. That night, they had gone to a skate park, and they were just hanging out. Like she said, they were just bored. Just five girls that somehow, allegedly, joined in this beating of this 64-year-old disabled man. And I’ve got to tell you, the video, which the public will never see, because it’s going to be sealed in the juvenile matter, is one of the most brutal videos I’ve ever seen in my life.
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