Five people were shot and two were killed just over a mile away from the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday afternoon.
Metropolitan Police Executive Assistant Chief Ashan Benedict called the area around the corner of O Street and North Capitol Street an “open-air drug market,” and stated that MPD “routinely polices this area and makes arrests for narcotics violations” in a press conference held in the aftermath of the shooting.
When asked what kind of drugs were typically sold in the area, Benedict replied that “you name it, it’s out here.”
Executive Assistant Chief Benedict provides an update on a shooting that occurred recently in the unit block of O Street, NW.
Have info? Call (202) 727-9099/text 50411 https://t.co/axaWaxZB3s
— DC Police Department (@DCPoliceDept) August 24, 2022
A half-block away, 25-year-old Ahmad Clark was shot and killed around 2 a.m. on Wednesday morning, according to a local NBC affiliate. Police have yet to apprehend suspects in either of the homicide cases, though they warn that three suspects remain at large in the first incident and at least two are being searched for in connection with the second shooting.
Police have recorded 136 homicides in the nation’s capital so far this year. That’s a slight increase over the 131 that had occurred to this point last year, but a massive increase over the medium-term; in 2017, 116 homicides occurred over the course of the entire year.
Not far from where the two recent shootings occurred, Starbucks closed its Union Station shop in D.C. — in addition to 15 other locations in urban centers around the country — due to “a high volume of challenging incidents that make it unsafe to continue to operate,” a company spokesman told National Review.
All five of Wednesday afternoon’s victims were black males. Benedict said that the suspects fled the scene in a black SUV. He called the situation “unacceptable,” and said that “we need to get these people off the street.”