A 30-year-old Largo man has been arrested in connection with a home invasion shooting in Columbia Heights that left a man dead and a 5-year-old boy wounded.
D.C. police arrested Allen Butler after they linked him to a burning minivan that had been stolen from a home where he had been staying, according to charging documents. Butler was charged with first-degree murder and was ordered to be held without bond.
At about 8 a.m. Thursday, two men in ski masks went to a two-story row house in the 600 block of Kenyon Street, and shot 37-year-old Franklin Johnson nine or 10 times, police said. A young boy was shot in the shoulder in the attack but was expected to survive.
The men fled in a burgundy- colored van with Georgia plates and police quickly issued a bulletin to be on the lookout for the
vehicle.
At about 9:45 p.m., a 2009 Dodge Caravan with Georgia plates was found on fire in the back of 4622 Livingston Road SE. Police learned that the van was a rental vehicle that had been reported missing about 30 minutes after the shooting.
When police went to interview the woman who rented the vehicle that night, Butler answered the door leaning on a crutch and wearing blue hospital pants, police said.
“You’re not here about the stolen car, you don’t do cases like that,” Butler said, according to police. “I saw the news, I know that the car was used in a homicide and then burned.”
Butler said he had been shot in a robbery the previous night, but video at the Prince George’s County hospital shows that he checked himself into the emergency room less than 30 minutes after the Kenyon Street shooting, document said.
Police are still looking for the second suspect, said D.C. Inspector Rodney Parks.
Detectives found a large quantity of marijuana in the closet of Johnson’s second-floor bedroom, according to police.
