Cold-case investigators in the District have made arrests in a trio of slayings from the late 1990s. A Fort Washington man was arrested Thursday in two of the killings, including the mistaken fatal shooting of a woman during a retaliatory attack on a neighborhood rival.
“The District of Columbia suffered more than 600 murders in 1998 and 1999, and many of those crimes remain unsolved,” said U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen Jr. “These developments reflect a sustained effort by the Metropolitan Police Department and the U.S. Attorney’s Office to crack the unsolved murders from that dangerous era in our city’s history.”
Thirty-five-year-old Cederick Shuler has been charged with first-degree murder in the February 1998 shooting of 26-year-old Renee Best and first-degree murder in the March 1999 killing of Edward Gray.
Prosecutors said that Shuler was trying to kill Walter Jones because he believed Jones killed Shuler’s friend Hosea Stringfield.
According to charging documents, on Feb. 22, 1998, Jones killed Stringfield over a woman. Jones and the woman drove into the parking lot of a convenience store in the 5000 block of Benning Road SE, and Jones went into the store. When he came out, Stringfield was talking to the woman and the two men got into a heated argument.
Several hours later, Stringfield, 27, was shot to death outside a carryout at 5008 Benning Road SE.
Prosecutors said Shuler went looking for Jones to avenge Stringfield’s death and instead shot and killed Renee Best of Northwest Washington. Jones was wounded in the attack and told a friend who took him to the hospital that he was shot for killing Best, prosecutors said.
A year later, prosecutors said, Shuler killed again.
According to charging documents, on March 22, 1999, Edward C. Gray drove his fiancee to the area of the 4800 block of Alabama Avenue SE to pick up his fiancee’s daughter. Gray noticed a group of men in the area and became nervous, so he drove away. When Gray returned to the block, several shots were fired into his truck, striking Gray in the head. The truck crashed and landed on a parked car.
Shuler was charged with first-degree murder while armed last week.
Two months ago, a D.C. grand jury indicted Shuler for Best’s death and Jones for Stringfield’s.
