A Washington DC man who allegedly fatally shot a 13-year-old boy who was allegedly breaking up cars has been formally charged with second-degree murder after graphic evidence presented by authorities.
The suspect, identified as 41-year-old Jason Lewis, from the northeast of the US capital, turned himself in to authorities around 8:00 a.m. Tuesday after police obtained a second-degree warrant for his arrest in the death. of the child Karon Blake.
According to the arrest warrant, when Lewis fired in his direction, Blake loudly yelled, “I’m sorry,” followed by “please don’t; I am a child,” before being shot, WTOP News reported.
The suspect, who was employed by the DC Department of Parks and Recreation, appeared before a DC Superior Court judge Tuesday afternoon, who ordered him held without bail.
“In this case, the video evidence and the hard work of our detectives was the key to reconstructing these events,” DC Police Chief Robert Contee said at a news conference Tuesday.
The police chief told reporters that Lewis initially told officers that he fired only two shots at the running teenager as Lewis stood in his backyard gate shortly before 4:00 am on January 7.
According to the suspect, he went to the front yard of his home armed with a Smith and Wesson semi-automatic pistol to investigate noises that he argued sounded like someone was trying to break into his home, according to the arrest warrant.
Contee added that surveillance video showed Lewis first shot at a Kia Sportage, where two people were with Blake, in what corresponded to an alleged “getaway car.”
“Everything else that develops is a result of that initial shot being fired,” Contee noted. “So whether or not Karon knew that a person was standing there with a gun that he was running to… I think that’s where things really fall apart: it was just the initial shot that went off, that set the chain of events in place.
The police chief noted that the evidence showed that Blake and the other two youths in the Kia were breaking into the cars on the fateful night.