WASHINGTON — A 16-year-old boy arrested at his high school during class last week allegedly helped plan the shooting that killed a little girl. Charging documents are detailing the role the teen and another woman played in the deadly shooting.
Four months to the day that 10-year-old Makiyah Wilson was shot on her way to an ice cream truck in the Clay Terrace neighborhood of Northeast D.C., 16-year-old Marquell Cobbs was arrested at Roosevelt High School. School resource officers arrested Cobbs on school grounds at 1:30 p.m. Friday.
Cobbs played a “vital role in planning” and was trusted to receive and relay text messages between other members of the Wellington Park gang around the time of the July 16 shooting, according to documents charging Cobbs as an adult with murder, among other charges.
Wilson was killed and four others were injured in a spray of 76 bullets that prosecutors said were fired by four men jumping out of a black Infiniti sedan. Three suspects were initially charged in the murder: 20-year-old Qujuan Thomas; 23-year-old Gregory Taylor; and 21-year-old Quentin Michals. Mark Tee Price, 24, was the fourth person charged in the killing; he’s already in prison on separate homicide charges.
Instagram videos posted live on Michals’ account the night of the shooting shows the three defendants flipping off the camera and singing along to a song whose lyrics included the line, “Homicide — we the reason why the murder rate high.”
They are all being held without bond by a D.C. Superior Court judge until all the parties charged in connection with the crime are presented for a hearing Dec. 5.
Cobbs was also caught on surveillance video in the minutes before the crew was seen leaving Pomeroy Road Southeast to drive to the shooting location, wearing a red T-shirt that reads “Don’t Tell On Me,” the documents said.
He “stored the firearms at his house for the members of Wellington Park,” the documents said. Cobbs does not live in the Barry Farms neighborhood of Southeast, where the gang operates, and it’s unclear how he is connected. But court documents show he exchanged text messages with the members of the Wellington Park crew around the time of the shooting.
An acquaintance of the crew, 25-year-old Quanisha Ramsuer, was charged with obstruction of justice on Tuesday, after court documents state she lied to investigators and to a grand jury about knowing the men.
Ramsuer is seen on surveillance video talking with Michals and other men on Pomeroy Road minutes before they left for Clay Terrace to shoot into the crowd, the documents said. On the day of the murder, she is seen on surveillance running her fingers through Michal’s hair, the documents said. Prosecutors allege Ramsuer lied to protect Michals as well as the other hooded suspects seen shooting in Clay Terrace.
