Two men were killed and three others were wounded in a shooting Wednesday afternoon in Northwest D.C., police said. It happened near O Street Northwest and North Capitol Street, near New York Avenue, around 12:45 p.m.
Witnesses told police that a small black SUV that had been traveling south on North Capitol Street made a right onto O Street Northwest, and stopped. “At least two shooters exited the vehicle and began shooting at folks that were on the block,” said Ashan Benedict, executive assistant chief for D.C. police. He said it looks so far like seven shots were fired The shooters reportedly drove off westbound on O Street.
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One person who works near the shooting site, Glen, told WTOP that minutes before first responders arrived, he heard “loud pounding with a deep bass” that almost sounded like construction equipment. “At first I thought, ‘Is it gunfire?,’ but then I’m like ‘Well, it’s going on this long. This has to be construction stuff.’ So I let it go from there. But all of a sudden — three, four minutes — I started hearing sirens.” An acquaintance told him they saw two bodies face-down on the sidewalk. Benedict called the site of the shooting “an open-air drug market.” He said the department “routinely polices this area, and makes arrests for narcotics violations. But our folks unfortunately, get back out. So this is an ongoing problem for us.” He said the site of the shooting was a senior center or residence. It’s not known whether any of the men who were shot lived there. Below is the area where the shooting occurred. [google_map latitude=”38.90864850257366″ longitude=”-77.00929726617674″ zoom=”15″ height=”300px” location_label=”The White House” dynamic_map=”true”] WTOP’s John Domen contributed to this report.
