A District man will spend the rest of his life in prison for killing a shunned friend who had testified for the government in a murder trial a dozen years earlier.
In the 1990s, during the height of the District’s crack cocaine epidemic, Anthony Waters, Derrick Harris and Marlone White were members of the Parkchester Crew in Southeast Washington. The street gang sold drugs on Birney Place and warred with the Barry Farms Crew nearby, authorities said.
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On the afternoon Oct. 15, 1996, prosecutors said, White cleaned a sawed-off shotgun and announced to fellow gang members that he was going to Barry Farms to kill their rivals. Waters and Harris declined to join him, prosecutors said.
Armed with the sawed-off shotgun and a .38-caliber pistol, White fired several shots into the crowd across the street from the Barry Farms community center, prosecutors said.
The gunfire scattered about two dozen children who had been listening to stories and singing songs, according to reports at the time.
The shots killed 22-year-old Brandy Jackson and wounded another young woman.
During the investigation, Harris cooperated with the government. He testified before the grand jury as well as at White’s murder trial. White was convicted.
And Harris avoided the Parkchester neighborhood, where he knew that people considered him a traitor.
But on June 14, 2010, Harris returned to Birney Place to meet an old friend and to celebrate his daughter’s graduation from middle school, prosecutors said.
Waters told Harris that he shouldn’t be in Parkchester because he had betrayed his friends. He punched Harris in the face, and told Harris that he needed to be gone by the time Waters got back or he’d kill him.
Waters kept his word, prosecutors said. A short time later, Waters returned to the area wearing a ski mask. He jumped from behind a building and fatally shot his old friend, prosecutors said. Harris suffered five gunshots to the back and one to the head.
U.S. Attorney Ronald C. Machen said Waters committed one of the worst crimes under the American justice system — the killing of a witness.
Waters was sentenced to life and won’t be eligible for parole, Machen said.
“That sentence,” Machen said, “reflects the depth of our commitment to punish those who target witnesses for simply telling the truth.”
