WASHINGTON – The Maryland man believed to have killed a D.C. family and their housekeeper has been arrested in the District.
Daron Dylon Wint, 34, was captured around 11 p.m. Thursday in the 1000 block of Rhode Island Avenue, Northeast, according to the Metropolitan Police Department.
Robert Fernandez, of the Capital Area Regional Fugitive Task Force, says their officers were heading toward a Howard Johnson hotel off Route 1 in College Park when they saw Wint was leaving the hotel with five other people in a car and a box truck.
Everyone was taken into custody; The Washington Post says $10,000 was found in the truck.
Wint is charged with the murders of Savvas Savopoulos, his wife Amy, their son Philip and their housekeeper Veralicia Figueroa. The four were found inside the family’s multimillion-dollar home on Woodland Drive in Northwest D.C. on May 14 after a fire.
Police said all were killed before the fire was set.
Wint was identified as a suspect through DNA evidence found on a piece of pizza inside the home.
Earlier Thursday, D.C. police said they believed Wint had gone to Brooklyn, New York, where his girlfriend was reportedly questioned. Investigators also searched for him at several Prince George’s County locations over the past day. “We barely missed him” in New York, Fernandez says.
Police said Wint previously worked for Savopoulos’ company American Iron Works, which is based in Hyattsville, Maryland. “It does not appear that this was a random crime,” D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier said at a news conference.
Wint is a native of Guyana and a former Marine, according to the Associated Press. He was convicted of assaulting a girlfriend in Maryland in 2009, and malicious destruction of property in 2010 after he was accused of threatening to kill a woman and her infant daughter, breaking into their apartment and stealing a TV and her car.
He was also arrested in 2010 carrying a machete and BB gun outside the American Iron Works offices, the Associated Press says, but the weapons charges were dropped after he pleaded guilty to possessing an open container of alcohol.
On Friday, the family said in a statement, “We are thankful to law enforcement who have worked so diligently to bring about an arrest in this case. While it does not abate our pain, we hope that it begins to restore a sense of calm and security to our neighborhood and to our city.
“We are blessed to live in a community comprised of close circles of friends who have supported us and grieve with us. We are grateful, as well, to the men and women of the fire department for their professionalism and caring.
“Our family, and Vera’s family, have suffered unimaginable loss, and we ask for the time and space to grieve privately.”
View map of area where police say Wint was taken into custody:
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
