A District man was sentenced to 40 years in prison for killing a man in front of dozens of witnesses during an illegal dice game in Northeast Washington, prosecutors said.
Rickey Pharr, 28, was found guilty in February of first-degree premeditated murder while armed, obstruction of justice and related charges in the 2010 shooting death of Angelo Jones.
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Prosecutors said Pharr and Jones, 31, got into an argument during a dice game in the early morning hours on Oct. 2, 2010, in the parking lot on the 5300 block of Dix Street NE.
“The murder of Angelo Jones was a senseless killing motivated by anger and the defendant’s inability to simply walk away,” wrote U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen in a sentencing memo.
Pharr had it out for Jones the moment he encountered him at the craps game that night, prosecutors said. In front of nearly 50 neighbors, Pharr called Jones “hot,” accusing him of being a government informant, one of the worst names that one could be labeled in the rough Clay Terrace neighborhood, witnesses testified at the two-week trial.
The argument ended, and Pharr left to find a gun, prosecutors said.
He found one. He returned about 10 minutes later with a .45-caliber semiautomatic weapon.
Now armed, he confronted Jones again. Jones walked away and through the parking lot, but prosecutors say Pharr chase him down and fired six shots into his back.
After the murder, Pharr fled the neighborhood, telling multiple witnesses that he had just “slumped” a person — meaning that he had killed someone, prosecutors said.
Pharr then tried to hide evidence and recruit friends to provide bogus alibis to the police, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors said Pharr had a lengthy arrest record, mostly for selling drugs around Clay Terrace and Lincoln Heights neighborhoods. Four months before the murder of Jones, Pharr had been released from jail on an earlier offense and was on supervised release at the time of the killing, court documents show.
Last month, Curtis Patters, 23, the man who supplied Pharr with the .45-caliber weapon, pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and unlawful possession of a fireman for his role in the crime. He’s scheduled to be sentenced May 11.
