A District man wanted in a double homicide at an illegal craps game in Columbia Heights was captured in Calvert County.
U.S. marshals deputies arrested 25-year-old Irving Harris Johnson at his aunt’s house in Lusby, Md., on Friday morning after they received an anonymous tip on the agency tip line Thursday night.
Johnson was charged with first-degree murder in the July 9 shooting deaths of Jimmie Lee Simmons III, 32, and Domonique Barber, 31, both of Northwest Washington. Johnson waived extradition and was being held in D.C. Superior Court jail.
“We finally grabbed him. It turned out well,” said D.C. police Det. Chris Coles, who had been searching for Johnson for about two months.
The Washington Examiner was the first to report that Johnson was wanted for the slayings, and he was featured as a fugitive in The Examiner’s “Most Wanted” feature on Aug. 10.
According to authorities, during the early morning hours of July 9, Johnson walked up on a craps game in the 1400 block of Parkwood Place NW and opened fire. Simmons and Barber died at the scene, and a third person was critically wounded.
It wasn’t the first time Johnson has been arrested in a homicide.
In November 2005, police arrested him for the death of 16-year-old Erica Anderson.
Johnson, then 19, was playing with a loaded handgun with several teenage friends at an apartment in the 3500 block of 14th Street in Columbia Heights, police said.
The gun went off and Anderson, a Bell Multicultural High School student, was shot in the face, police said.
Johnson said it was an accident. Prosecutors said there wasn’t enough evidence to go forward with charges, and Johnson was released before the case was presented to a judge, court records show.
No charges have been filed in Anderson’s death.
Johnson was arrested several times in 2006 on separate cocaine and unauthorized use of a car charges. He was sent to prison in 2008 on a conviction of carrying a pistol without a license, and he was released in May.
