By Harry Jaffe Mary Jones worked the night shift at a nursing home on Capitol Hill. She was a grandmother, sang in the Trinity Baptist Church choir, lived with her husband of many years. She had turned 50 in October. Tuesday before Christmas, Jones was waiting at a bus stop on Southern Avenue for her trip to work. She wouldn’t make it. Glendale Ogburn, behind the wheel of a white Cadillac, came barreling down Southern Avenue. The speed limit is 25 miles per hour; Ogburn was doing at least 50, according to witnesses. He lost control, jumped the curb, leveled a tree, bent the pole at the bus stop and struck Jones. Ogburn’s Cadillac kept going. He drove along the sidewalk, hit a stop sign and finally came to rest after it hit an embankment and a chain-link fence. Jones died at the scene. Ogburn was not hurt. When he got out of the car he seemed totally at ease, as if he had parked and was heading to grab a burger. He didn’t seem to have any idea he had just struck and killed a woman, and in the process had blasted a hole in a family. This sordid tale is told in cold, grim details in court documents. Ogburn, 33, was ordered held without bond pending his Jan. 4 court appearance. This sad story bears similar lines to the bizarre incident in June 2007. A woman behind the wheel of a Volvo plowed through a street festival in Anacostia and sent 35 people flying. She later admitted in court to having used PCP and crack cocaine. The connective tissue in these random cases of mayhem — and too many others — could be PCP. Known on the street as “dippers,” because marijuana joints are dipped into liquid PCP, phencyclidine makes many people go totally bonkers. It can provoke hallucinations, unrelenting violence, inexplicable bad behavior of all sorts. The off-duty police officer who first arrived at the scene where Jones died said in charging documents that the Cadillac driven by Ogburn “exuded a strong smell characteristic of PCP.” Ogburn was not charged with possession of PCP. If he had been, the stiffest penalty would have been a misdemeanor, and cops and prosecutors say they have a tough time making PCP cases stick. That’s one reason they asked Phil Mendelson, chairman of the D.C. Council’s Judiciary Committee, to strengthen the laws. Mendelson has introduced legislation to make PCP possession a felony, and to suggest jail time of “not more than five years.” Mendelson makes a good start, but as often happens with this city council, he doesn’t go far enough. Rather than “not more than,” the language should read “a minimum” of five years. We know that PCP causes random mayhem, violence and homicide. Let’s take people who use it — and make it — off our streets.
E-mail Harry Jaffe at [email protected].
