Isn’t Dee Cee a gun free zone?
Vincent Antoine Purvis was shot and killed near a recreation center in Southeast Washington in mid-afternoon on Jan. 15. A week later, his childhood friend was gunned down a few blocks from the Anacostia Metro station at 1:30 p.m. Two days later, Marcus Minor, 21, was killed on a street in Barry Farm.
The three are among eight people, most of them young men, many with past run-ins with police, who lost their lives in quick succession from mid-January to early February in a spate of violence that contributed to the near doubling of this year’s homicide count, compared with the same period last year.
The victims were shot and killed during daylight hours over the span of 23 days on a stretch of District real estate running five miles along the Anacostia River, from Barry Farm to Kenilworth in Southeast and Northeast Washington.
D.C. police say two of the eight killings might be related, but the investigation is in its early stages. The pace and time of day is alarming considering the drop in homicides over the past decade, and the half-century low of 88 in 2012. And it’s a sobering reminder that residents of some neighborhoods still endure troubled streets.