Two fatal shootings in Adams Morgan over the weekend have put residents and business owners in this Northwest Washington neighborhood known for its vibrant nightlife on edge, and sparked calls for a more robust police presence as patrons emerge from pandemic shutdowns.
The killings, hours and blocks apart, of Derron McQueen, 18, and Avon Perkins, 30, appear unrelated, and neither was believed to be random, according to DC police. They occurred in an area with little violent crime, according to police statistics.
Authorities said Perkins was shot early Saturday morning on 18th Street NW, a busy commercial strip, after a dispute. McQueen, they said, was shot in the chest while in a vehicle later that night, then pushed onto Euclid Street in a residential area a half-mile away.
Bill Duggan, who has owned the Madam’s Organ bar on 18th Street for three decades, said he was outside chatting with a musician from an establishment next door when he heard the first of several gunshots about 30 feet away.
“I turned and I watched a guy falling backward,” Duggan, 71, said of the earlier shooting. “Then I watched a guy pump four more bullets into him.”
He said the gunman then turned toward him, pointed the gun in his direction and fired into a crowd where he was standing, striking a female bystander who he said was walking out of a pizza restaurant. Police said she was not believed to have life-threatening injuries.
Duggan, who said he dove behind a flower box to escape the gunfire, later complained on a neighborhood email group that he saw no police on 18th Street from Friday night into Saturday.
The Adams Morgan Partnership Business Improvement District had for years coordinated a program, largely funded by business owners, to hire as many as a dozen off-duty police officers to keep the peace in an area crowded with bars. But the BID resolved the program in March 2020, calling it an unnecessary expense when nightlife spots were largely shuttered because of the pandemic, according to executive director Kristen Barden. She said there had not been a conversation about restoring the program.
Duggan said he would like to see more police, but private business owners should not have to pay for policing beyond what is covered by taxes.
“We should never have a neighborhood that has thousands of people on the street have no police,” Duggan said. “We don’t need nine or 13 officers; we can get by with two or three. But we should never be in a position where we have none.”
Morgan C. Kane, an assistant DC police chief in charge of patrol, said officers pay attention to the 18th Street corridor in Adams Morgan, but they are not permanently assigned there. She said that is in part because of low staffing, and in part because there is more violent crime elsewhere.
“As much as we’re able to, we’ll make sure officers give special attention” to that area, Kane said.
Salah Czapary, a former DC police officer who is now the acting director of the city’s Office of Nightlife and Culture, visited 18th Street after the shootings and said extra officers would be assigned to the area in the short term. That is typical after homicides. Czapary said he also will encourage a conversation about restarting the extra-duty detail.
Police said this weekend’s fatal shootings were the first homicides in Adams Morgan since 2019. Three people have been shot this year in Adams Morgan area, including the two men shot Saturday, police said.
Kane said she supported the extra-duty officers paid for by businesses and would advocate the return of that program. She noted that Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) had proclaimed the District open for business, “so I think we would revisit the posture we took prior to the pandemic.”
Over the summer, Bowser launched a nightlife task force to keep entertainment strips along U Street NW, H Street NE and Connecticut Avenue NW safe by deploying extra police officers and civilian conflict mediators. A Washington Commanders running back was shot and wounded along H Street in August, and a 15-year-old was fatally shot on U Street during an event in June.
Kane said 18th Street in Adams Morgan was not included in that plan because crime was comparatively low. “At the time, there were other areas we need to focus on,” she said.
The first of Saturday’s shootings occurred shortly before 1:30 am in the 2400 block of 18th Street NW. Kane said Perkins, who is from Baltimore, got into an argument with another man and punched him before he was shot. A police report says he died on a sidewalk after suffering multiple gunshot wounds. Efforts to reach his relatives were not successful.
Kane said that later that day McQueen met with a person inside a vehicle. That person appears to have shot him and left him in the 1700 block of Euclid Street NW a little after 10 pm, Kane said.
McQueen’s grandmother, Regina Williams, said her grandson lived most recently with his father in Prince George’s County, Md., but had relatives in the District as well. She said she last saw him at her house in Northeast Washington for Thanksgiving.
Williams, 55, described McQueen as a “well-mannered” teen who dressed smartly, enjoyed video games and had three siblings. She said she did not know what might have led to the shooting.
Williams said she has 14 other grandchildren ranging in age from infancy to 19.
“By the grace of God, I will make sure they’re safe,” she said. “It feels like the world has come to an end. People are just killing people. It makes no sense.”
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