A crippling July heat wave wasn’t enough to slow down homicides in Prince George’s County, as the county creeps toward a three-year high in murders. The heat seemed to put a damper on killings in Prince George’s – temperatures flirted with 100 degrees for much of past few weeks – and until Thursday, there hadn’t been a homicide in the county since July 13.
But what had been a relatively quiet month ended with a bloody weekend that saw two homicides in four days, as well as a quadruple shooting in Glenarden.
| Summer homicides | ||||||
| June | July | Year-to-date | ||||
| 2011 | 9 | 6 | 62 | |||
| 2010 | 7 | 4 | 47 | |||
The two late-July murders brought Prince George’s to 62 homicides so far this year, up from 47 at the same time in 2010.
Vickie Lee Griffin, 62, of Temple Hills was found dead by Prince George’s Fire and EMS investigating a gas odor inside her apartment on Thursday. Police arrested her live-in boyfriend, Donald Dixon, 50, and charged him with first-degree murder.
A 60-year-old Landover man, Jonathan Kelly, was arrested Sunday and charged with second-degree murder in the stabbing of his roommate, 46-year-old David Smith, early Sunday morning.
Police also are searching for suspects and a motive in the Sunday shooting, which sent four people to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries.
At this rate, the county is on pace to exceed 100 homicides for the first time since 2008, when 117 people were killed.
The brief dip in crime during the heat wave was welcome, but suprising given the common law enforcement theory that heat breeds bad behavior.
“Over the years, the sort of tried-and-true explanation was hot weather breeds short fuses and short tempers,” said Ramon Korionoff, spokesman for the Prince George’s County state’s attorney. “But, there are just going to be times when spikes are aberrations.”
But one criminologist said the Washington area’s record-breaking heat and humidity the weekend of July 23 may have been enough to stop violent crime. “It may have reached the point that it’s so blasted hot outside that violent offenders, like everybody else, are staying inside,” Ellen Cohn, a professor at Florida International University, said after the heat index reached 121 that weekend.
Prince George’s County police also saw the homicide count rise in the summer months, despite a joint effort with the state’s attorney’s office to crack down on violent crimes in five high-risk neighborhoods: Langley Park, Riverdale, Suitland, Hillcrest Heights, and Glassmanor.
While none of last month’s homicides took place in those neighborhoods, there were still six murders in July, two more than the four that occurred in July 2010. Police note the number is still far short of the 13 homicides that occurred in the first two weeks of January.
“By working hard in those five communities, we’re supporting the police in trying to bring down overall crime throughout the county,” Korionoff said. “As we move forward throughout the year, we’re hoping that groundwork will begin to pay off.”
