Police in Prince George’s County say there is no discernible pattern to the four slayings in the county this week, dismissing comparisons with a January spike in homicides that revolved around related drug killings. “None of these are related,” said Capt. Misty Mints, a police spokesman, of the four recent homicides. “They’re individual cases.”
The county went almost two weeks without any reported killings, a respite from a spree in homicides at the beginning of the year. The last homicide in the county — the shooting death of a man near an elementary school on Friday — is the county’s 20th killing of 2011.
“There’s no doubt that individual was targeted,” Mints said of the victim shot dead on a basketball court near Deerfield Run Elementary School. “He had definitely been targeted for some time.”
An autopsy has been ordered by police for human remains found in the woods by a motorist driving along Interstate 495 at Suitland Parkway, though police are not yet investigating it as a homicide, Mints said.
She said the county continues to receive help from federal agents, who played a role in quelling the January violence. “We still have them embedded. In every case we have coming in, they are assisting with that,” she said.
The agents have helped close some cases, she said, most recently with the arrest of 42-year-old Eldridge Slaughter, accused of murdering Christopher Alan Trueheart, 44, inside his Temple Hills apartment on Feb. 13.
Police are still looking for the driver of a 2007 light blue Chevy Malibu, seen speeding away from the scene where 28-year-old Ralph Bernard Thomas Jr., 28, was found stabbed to death in Suitland on Feb. 13. “There’s not that many that color in that year in Malibus out there. Somebody knows something,” Mints said.
Police believe most of the recent homicides are the results of disputes between two people who know each other. “A whole lot of them are personal disputes,” said Mints. “Obviously, these individuals need to learn how to handle disputes in a peaceful manner and that’s not happening.”
