A D.C. man was shot dead in Seat Pleasant Thursday afternoon, marking Prince George’s County’s seventh homicide in six days. Officers responded to an emergency call from the Seat Pleasant neighborhoodabout noon on Thursday to find a 26-year-old District man shot dead in the passenger seat of a gray Pontiac Bonneville.
Using a description given by residents, a Seat Pleasant officer arrested a suspect, whom police have not named, just nine minutes after the dispatch call, said Maj. Andrew Ellis, a county police spokesman. No other arrests have been made in any of the other six homicides of the year.
Police Cpl. Evan Baxter said neither the victim nor suspect is thought to be a resident of Central Hills Lane, where the gunshot victim was found. Police said they will not release the identification of the victim until his family has been notified.
While authorities have said there’s a “drug nexus” running through most of the homicides that have occurred this week, Ellis said he could not say whether that was the case in the Seat Pleasant murder. “It’s really too early to tell,” he said, explaining that no drugs were found in plain view at the crime scene.
One neighbor, Shade Falaye, a mother of two children, watched investigators move about the crime scene just two doors down from her home on Thursday. She called her street “peaceful” and said she was unaware of drug activity in the area.
The first homicide of the year was the stabbing death of a man in Chillum.
On Tuesday alone, four men were slain across the county in separate locations. On Wednesday night, a 30-year-old man was shot and killed in the stairwell of a Fort Washington apartment complex. Ellis said drugs may have a played a role in all instances.
One law enforcement source said authorities don’t find the violence symptomatic of a turf war or gang dispute.
Two of this year’s homicide victims were found with duct-taped mouths, but officers said they do not think the other incidents are connected to each other. “It’s not like we have one serial killer who is going out killing different people,” Ellis said. “They all seem to be different with the exception of the two.”
Ramon Korionoff, a spokesman for State’s Attorney Angela Alsobrooks, said her office “is working closely with police to get to the bottom of these cases.”
Ellis said the county has seen homicide spikes before. In March 2007, he said, there were six homicides in one weekend.
