Renee Green doesn’t expect to learn who killed her brother, but she can’t stop thinking about it.
Green put out fliers, canvassed neighborhoods and has even taken criminology classes to figure out how Benjamin Washington Jr. was killed.
“I don’t have any hope, but it bothers me not to know what happened to him,” Green said.
In the early morning hours of Dec. 18, 2004, Washington, 29, was found shot to death in a wooded area of the 5300 block of Woodacres Drive in Suitland. He was discovered more than six miles from where he was last seen — his neighborhood around 47th Street and Sheriff Road in Northeast Washington.
“We believe he was targeted,” said Sgt. Rick Fulginiti, of the Prince George’s County Police Department.
Washington was shot numerous times to his upper body. Detectives don’t known whether he was shot where he was found or killed somewhere else and dumped there. A witness told police they heard gunshots about an hour or two before Washington was found.
Washington hung out with a rough crowd, police said, which may have played a role in his death.
There has been much speculation about Washington’s death, Green said, including a strange voicemail on Washington’s cell phone, the disappearance of a man in a red truck who often gave Washington rides and the return from prison of a former friend whom Washington testified against in a murder trial when Washington was in his mid-teens.
Those leads and others have been checked out, Fulginiti said. Washington’s case file is thick with the negative results of chased down leads.
“It’s a very difficult case,” Fulginiti said. “We’re hoping that someone comes forward and gives us that one key piece of information so that we can close the case and give some type of closure to this family.”
Anyone with information about Washington’s killing can call, Prince George’s County Crimesolvers at 1-866-411-TIPS.
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