A District probation officer has been convicted of trying to mislead authorities about her boyfriend’s whereabouts during a shooting in Southeast D.C.
According to prosecutors, 31-year-old Lakeisha Scott lied to investigators and to a grand jury about her boyfriend’s activities the morning of Jan. 16, 2011, when he fired 11 rounds into an apartment building. A D.C. Superior Court jury convicted her this week of obstruction of justice.
The incident happened after Scott — a probation officer for the District’s Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency — learned her boyfriend was involved with another woman. Scott found out about the relationship after she answered phone calls from the other woman on her boyfriend’s phone while the two were at her Capitol Heights home, authorities said.
The boyfriend, Damon Witherspoon, then drove to the other woman’s D.C. apartment. He saw the woman in the window and shot 11 rounds into the side of her building, according to prosecutors. No one was injured during the incident.
The woman told investigators that she was on the phone with Scott at the time of the shooting. Prosecutors said Scott tried to call her boyfriend after the incident and when she couldn’t reach him, called the other woman again.
When Witherspoon was arrested, he told authorities that he had been with Scott all morning, prosecutors said.
Scott told detectives that she didn’t know anything about a shooting and that Witherspoon had been with her for most of the morning and was gone for only a 10 minute span that didn’t include the time of the shooting. Scott later told a grand jury the same story, authorities said.
Defense attorney Daniel Dorsey declined to comment, citing Scott’s pending sentencing. A sentencing date will be set an April 20 hearing.
Scott was still employed with CSOSA as of Wednesday, agency spokesman Leonard Sipes said. He said CSOSA would “take a criminal conviction very seriously” and take appropriate action, but declined to comment further, saying it was a personnel matter.
Scott was also charged with perjury, but the jury couldn’t reach a verdict on that offense and a mistrial was declared. Prosecutors will inform Judge Heidi Pasichow whether they plan to retry Scott on that charge at the April 20 hearing, said Bill Miller, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Scott could face up to 30 years in prison for the obstruction conviction.
Witherspoon pleaded guilty in April 2011 to assault with a deadly weapon, according to court records. He was sentenced to two and a half years in prison and three years of supervised release.
