WASHINGTON — Three men, including two sitting in a parked car, were shot to death in a quiet, residential neighborhood in Southeast D.C. and police are now seeking two suspects.
The shooting happened in the 1500 block of Fort Davis Place by Fort Davis Recreation Center. Police were called to the scene after 10 p.m. and found two men in a parked car suffering from what appeared to be gunshot wounds. The two men were pronounced dead, D.C. Police Chief Pete Newsham said. About 50 yards from the car, police found another man shot on the street.
On Sunday evening, Newsham identified the three victims as Sean Shuler, 26, of Capitol Heights, Maryland; Javon Abeny, 26, of Southeast D.C., and Tyrik Hagood, 24, of Northeast D.C.
“This has got to be unsettling for this community,” Newsham said. “They don’t have gunshots going off in this community very often. To have something like this is just tragic.”
Police are looking for a dark-colored sedan that was headed toward Alabama Avenue Southeast. They are also looking for one suspect wearing a red hoodie and another suspect wearing a white baseball cap, black jacket and white pants.
Newsham said that it is too early in the investigation to know whether gunfire was exchanged. He said that police found a handgun, ammunition and drugs in the car that the men were found in.
Northeast shooting
The chief also identified the victim in another fatal shooting from Saturday — he said a man was found at about 3:30 p.m. on Hayes Street in Northeast, just south of the Anacostia Freeway. The man was identified as Kevin Jerome Harrison, 59, of Northeast. They didn’t give any information about whom they were looking out for.
D.C. has seen a spike in homicides since the start of the year. Even before Saturday’s deadly triple shooting, there had been 14 killings so far this year — compared to seven at this time last year, according to D.C. police data.
“The number of shootings we’ve had in our city has remained consistent over the past three years,” Newsham said; “it’s just [that] the lethality of those shootings has increased.” He said patrols would be concentrating on the areas where shootings were known to occur.
Newsham said a proliferation of illegal guns is to blame.
“The police department is arresting a lot of folks carrying illegal firearms,” he said. “We’ve got to make sure that we have consequences in this city that change behavior and right now, we don’t have that.”
WTOP’s Melissa Howell and Rick Massimo contributed to this report.
