WASHINGTON — D.C. police are intensifying their search for four suspects who on Monday evening opened fire on a crowd of people at a Northeast D.C. apartment courtyard, killing a 10-year-old girl near a playground and wounding four adults.
The girl was identified early Tuesday as Makiyah Wilson. Three men and a woman were also injured in the shooting, which has prompted outrage, anger and desperate calls from city leaders for help from the public in identifying the girl’s killers.
Police said the four suspects were driving a black Infiniti sedan with a missing rear bumper. (The vehicle had earlier been misidentified as an SUV.)
Surveillance video released by D.C. police Tuesday afternoon shows the car pulling into a courtyard parking lot between two rows of brick apartment houses on 53rd Street in Northeast. The video shows the doors of the car flying open and the four suspects tumbling out, opening fire in different directions. The shooting appears to last for about 10 second before the masked suspects pile back into the car and it takes off.
Police said the suspects fired on a crowd of 15-20 people who had gathered in the courtyard and a nearby playground to enjoy the weather.
A D.C. police source told WTOP more than 40 bullet casings were recovered from the area near the apartment courtyard.
“They did this indiscriminately,” Assistant D.C. Police Chief Chanel Dickerson said during a news conference late Monday night. “They came out in this community without regard to human life and opened fire,” Dickerson said at Monday night news conference. “And we have to stand up as a community and say, ‘no more.’ A 10-year-old girl lost her life here today. All the hopes and the dreams that her family had for her are gone. And we have to be outraged. We have to work with police. You have to work with us to remove illegal firearms from our city.”
Police have not described the relationship between Wilson and the four others shot.
In a statement issued Tuesday afternoon Ward 7 D.C. Council Member Vincent Gray decried recent gun violence in the community referencing the nonfatal shooting of an 11-year-old girl on July 4.
“We are outraged about these shootings and senseless deaths,” Gray said in the statement.
Anyone with any information about is asked to call police at 202-727-9099 or to text the department’s anonymous tip line at 50411. The D.C. Police Department currently offers a reward of up to $25,000 to anyone that provides information leading up to the arrest and conviction of suspects responsible for any homicide committed in the District.
WTOP’s Megan Cloherty contributed to this report.
