D.C. parents want more security after shooting outside track meet
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D.C. police chief Pamela Smith in this 2024 photo visits a crime scene. Photo: Allison Robbert/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Families of D.C. elementary school students are rattled after a man was recently shot to death in broad daylight outside the athletic field where a championship was taking place.
The big picture: That incident in Northeast was a reminder of how violence continues to traumatize the District, even as overall crime trends point downward. Police are beefing up patrols in anticipation of gun violence spiking in the summer.
- No students were hurt that day. But the chaos is on the minds of families as hundreds of kids return on Wednesday for the rescheduled race, relocated to a new site in Northwest.
Zoom in: Just before 2pm on May 20, three men jumped out of a car on the 800 block of 26th Street NE, outside the Spingarn High School's athletic field, per the Washington Post.
- Kian-Wayne Magruder, 31, was shot and killed. Gunfire erupted on the sidewalk next to bleachers in an execution-style killing, said a handful of parents who attended. The vehicle fled the scene and was later found burned out in the Fort Lincoln neighborhood, per police.
- An arrest has yet to be made, D.C. police tell Axios.
Parents are pushing for more security at future events — and asking D.C. Public Schools why the meet was even held there in the first place.
- Another shooting occurred weeks earlier less than a block away, hours after a similar track meet. Three suspects fired bullets in a neighboring school's parking lot, missing a victim and fleeing, according to D.C. police.
What they're saying: "At the very least, the event should have been heavily guarded by MPD," Alanna Mazzarella Hart, the mom of a fifth grader who participated in both meets, told Schools Chancellor Lewis Ferebee in an email she shared with Axios.
- The outdoor track — the site of a sports complex and former D.C. high school — is one of the few facilities that meets competition standards.
- Ferebee says DCPS "mental health providers have continued to see students individually and in groups, and their notes are clear: Our student athletes are showing incredible resilience," per a response written to Hart last week.
- "We are all deeply shaken and upset," Ferebee wrote.
"My son's been pretty traumatized by it," Hart tells Axios.
- The rescheduled track championship will take place instead at Calvin Coolidge High School in Northwest on Wednesday afternoon, Ferebee told parents. The chancellor says he hopes to attend.
- DCPS tells Axios an extra police officer will be at the rescheduled event.
Some parents urge race organizers to forego using a starter pistol.
- The D.C. Interscholastic Athletic Association, which holds DCPS events, originally told some parents it would need to be used.
But the executive director of another group that oversees D.C. high school sports competitions suggested alternatives on Friday.
- "They can use a whistle. … I agree with you that would be a little traumatizing for those kids to hear that gun go off," Kenneth Owens, the head of the D.C. State Athletic Association, told D.C. Council members at a hearing where the incident came up.
By the numbers: D.C. has recorded 69 homicides so far this year, nearly on par with this time last year, per police data. Violent crime is down 22% compared with the same time last year.
- Even with a 31% drop in homicides last year, killings are still higher than pre-pandemic levels.
Editor's note: This story was corrected to reflect that Kenneth Owens leads the D.C. State Athletic Association (not the D.C. Interscholastic Athletic Association) and that an earlier shooting occurred at a nearby school's parking lot (not Spingarn's).