Four people, including two juveniles, were wounded by gunfire Saturday night at an apartment building three blocks west of Nationals Park about 45 minutes after a Washington Nationals game ended, D.C. police said.
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None of the victims suffered life-threatening wounds in the shooting, which occurred shortly before 11 p.m. at a brick residential building at P and Canal streets SW, according to police. They said detectives were searching for at least two people of interest, both young males, whose images were captured on security video in the area, a residential neighborhood of mostly apartment buildings and rowhouses.
The two adult victims suffered grazing wounds, one to the right arm, the other to the left leg, according to a police incident report and news release. One of the juveniles was shot in the left arm and the other, the most seriously wounded of the four, was shot at least three times, the report says. It described all the wounds as not “life-threatening.”
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Last July, a volley of gunfire on South Capitol Street near the baseball stadium left three people wounded and forced the suspension of a Nationals night game with the San Diego Padres as nervous fans in the ballpark scrambled out of the stands and into the dugouts.
Baseball game suspended after shooting outside Nationals Park
It was not immediately clear whether any of the victims Saturday had attended the Nationals game with the New York Mets, which ended about 10:15 p.m., roughly 45 minutes before the gunfire erupted about a third of a mile from the ballpark. Attendance at the home game, the third of the season, was listed at 21,369 people.
“We have had a lot of issues lately, a lot of crime uptick, and residents want to know what is going on,” said Edward Daniels, a member of the D.C. Advisory Neighborhood Commission who represents the ballpark area. While the crime increase has ranged “from carjackings to people grabbing things off tables at restaurants,” Daniels said, “the shootings have definitely been the most problematic.”
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Police and federal agents last month charged two people in the sale of a deadly batch of fentanyl that authorities said targeted the Southwest Waterfront neighborhood near the stadium in January, causing nine overdose fatalities.
Police arrest two people in sale of fentanyl that led to nine deaths
Citing the gunfire during a Nationals game last summer and “now this,” Daniels said, “the residents are just tired of these people being on the street, as am I.” He said there is an Advisory Neighborhood Commission meeting Monday night, “and the D.C. police will be in that meeting, so we’ll be able to ask them what’s being done.”
The two adult victims, both males, gave police home addresses in Northeast Washington and Laurel, Md., according to the incident report. Neither could be immediately reached for comment Sunday. The addresses of the juveniles, one of whom is a girl, were not listed in the report.
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In addition, a fifth person, whose listed address is in Lorton, Va., told police that the front end of his Toyota Corolla was damaged by the gunfire. The vehicle owner could not be immediately reached Sunday.
When police arrived at the shooting scene, in the 100 block of P Street SW, they found only one victim, the juvenile who had been shot three times, according to the incident report. The others “had fled the scene on foot,” the report says.
One adult and the other juvenile were later located at the Navy Yard-Ballpark Metro station, two blocks north of the stadium. The other adult was found outside a new apartment building across Potomac Street SW from the ballpark.