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When police arrived at the Valo apartments in Southwest Washington on Tuesday, they found a bloody and chaotic scene.
A man who was among five people shot spilled out of an elevator and told officers, “They tried to rob me,” according to a newly unsealed arrest warrant. He had wounds to his legs and a semiautomatic handgun next to him, the warrant says.
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Inside the fifth-floor unit where the shooting took place, investigators found money “spread throughout the kitchen and the living room,” and bags of a green “weed-like” substance, along with several large suitcases with handwritten notes attached to them.
The warrant offered new details of the shooting, in which one person was fatally shot and four others shot and wounded in a rapidly gentrifying area near the Wharf and Nationals Park.
Police charged Southeast Washington residents Deandre Sams, 27, Raymond Mathis, 36, and Keshawn Lavender, 22, with first-degree murder while armed in the incident. All three were themselves shot and wounded, and arrested after they sought treatment at the hospital.
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Police said they found Matthew Miller, 32, dead from gunshot wounds in one of two bedrooms in the apartment.
Authorities said Sams and Mathis remained hospitalized on Thursday and did not make an appearance in court. A Superior Court judge ordered Lavender detained and set a hearing for Sept. 27. His attorney was not listed in court documents. The man who told police he was the victim of a robbery attempt was not charged.
D.C. police arrest 3 men in fatal Waterfront-area shooting
The warrant summarizes interviews with several residents who heard gunshots and saw people fleeing. One witness described hearing a “flurry of bullets,” while another reported seeing men with ski masks and guns running out of the building.
The warrant says investigators found a blood trail that extended from the elevator, through the lobby, out the front door and to the sidewalk along M Street.
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The man found injured in the lobby told police that at least three men dressed in all-black clothing rushed into the apartment with guns “and started shooting,” according to the warrant.
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That man told police that he got one of the shooter’s guns and returned fire, the warrant says. It was not clear if someone dropped the gun or if the man wrestled it away from an assailant.
Police said in the warrant that there were two bursts of gunfire from two different caliber guns and that a total 11 rounds were fired. Police said a second gun was found in an apartment hallway, next to a plate with a taco on it.
The warrant says the gunmen ran out of the apartment after the shootings and went to a hospital. A sixth man fell from a fifth-story ledge and also was injured, police said.
Miller’s mother said this week that her son lived “partly” at the apartment; the warrant says the alleged assailants were buzzed into the apartment by the leaseholder, whose name did not match any of the suspects or victims in the shooting.
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