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The teachers and toddlers from the D.C. day-care center were on a break during their Monday afternoon stroll through Bloomingdale neighborhood’s historic district when Marleni Etevina Diaz-Villalobos noticed a disheveled man talking to a colleague.
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He was standing uncomfortably close, the 20-year-old assistant teacher recalled, and the “kids looked scared.” She said she yelled at the man, who then turned and walked toward her, despite her threats to call police.
“Call them — they won’t do anything,” the man replied, according to Diaz-Villalobos. By this time, she said, two frightened children were pressed against her legs.
Then, as 24 toddlers and eight other day-care workers watched, Diaz-Villalobos said, “He just started beating me up. … The kids were screaming, telling the man to let me go.”
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Police said the attack occurred shortly before 4:30 p.m. near Second and S streets NW, a few blocks from the children’s day-care facility, Petit Scholars, on Quincy Place. The teachers and students take a walk every day around the same time, pausing at a small stone wall where they sit and sip water on a street lined with two- and three-story rowhouses.
Sometimes, the school’s founder said, residents come out and talk with the children, and listen to them sing songs.
But on Monday, the routine walk turned dangerous. D.C. police said the man, identified as Russell Fred Dunkley III, 38, had been asking for money. They said he repeatedly punched Diaz-Villalobos and another female day-care worker in the heads and face when they asked to be left alone.
Diaz-Villalobos said she suffered a bloody nose and spent Monday night in a hospital. Police said Dunkley, whom they described as unhoused and a fixture in the neighborhood, exposed himself to the workers and children, and committed another lewd act, before he ran away.
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“Our children are our most vulnerable people,” said Carlos Heraud, an assistant D.C. police chief in charge of the investigative services bureau. “It’s extremely troubling when they’re affected by a crime like this. I think we all have a responsibility to keep these children safe.”
Police arrested Dunkley a short time later, after a witness pointed him out near where the attack occurred. He was charged with several crimes, including two counts of assault on the day-care teachers and sexual abuse of a child. Police said that while at a hospital, Dunkley spit at and struck an officer, so he was also charged with assaulting a police officer.
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The attack came amid a spike in violent crime in the District that has put safety at the forefront of local debate and made crime in D.C. a national talking point.
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Although the escalating number of homicides and shootings garners the most public attention, it can be assaults like Monday’s — in daylight, targeting people and children doing everyday activities — that can frame a vision of a city in distress.
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“Everyone is not okay,” said La Shada Ham-Campbell, the founder of Petit Scholars, which has five day-care centers in Ward 5, including the one in Bloomingdale. “Our families are distressed. Our children were traumatized. Our teachers were victimized.”
She added, “I don’t know what our children saw, because they are so young.” She said one toddler went home “talking about a bad guy.”
Hours before the attack, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) proposed a new crime bill vowing to “send the strong message that violence is not acceptable in our city.” But the incident with the day-care workers highlighted another front in the struggle to curb crime: how to deal with people who need help with mental health.
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Court and police records reveal a lengthy arrest record for Dunkley on charges of aggressive panhandling, disorderly conduct, verbal abuse and indecent exposure. In 2019, a judge barred him from Bloomingdale’s Crispus Attucks Park, three blocks from where Monday’s assault occurred. Police said Dunkley had been arrested in Bloomingdale on Oct. 3 on charges similar to Monday’s, involving adult victims, and was released on a citation pending a future court date.
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D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5), whose district includes Bloomingdale, said a law allowing authorities to involuntarily detain people for 48 hours for mental health evaluation needs to be reexamined to add more time. Police records show that, as of Tuesday, Dunkley was being detained at a hospital. His initial court appearance has not been scheduled, and it could not be determined if he has an attorney.
“We have a problem, and that is at a crisis level,” said Parker, who rushed to the scene of the attack Monday and spoke to a victim and parents, some of whom kept their children home Tuesday. The lawmaker said he hopes Dunkley gets the help he needs, but he also said that “my sincerest hope is that he will be detained and prosecuted.”
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Parker said he is “frustrated because I see loopholes in our system. People are not being held accountable, and our community is being violated and traumatized.”
Ham-Campbell said Petit Scholars has four locations in the Brookland community and one in Bloomingdale. She said gunfire near various locations frequently prevents outdoor activities. At Bloomingdale, the staff members walk toward residential areas to avoid North Capitol Street, where she said there is drug dealing and other criminal activity. And they go out in large groups — Monday’s outing included three classrooms — believing there is safety in numbers.
“It’s the gunfire that normally we’ve been concerned about,” Ham-Campbell said.
Diaz-Villalobos said the attack remains a blur, and she doesn’t recall the man exposing himself, as police described in a report. She said she had her phone out and dialed 911, but the man either knocked it away or she threw it at him before she could talk to an operator.
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“Everything was just so fast,” she said. “He was beating me and didn’t stop until one of my co-workers pulled him away from the back.” She said residents came out of their homes to help, and took her and the children inside.
Diaz-Villalobos, a freshman studying education at the University of the District of Columbia, said she and her sister came to the United States from El Salvador in 2011, when she was 8 years old, crossing the border by themselves to reach their parents, who were already in this country.
She said they made the trip to escape gang violence.
“It was no longer safe in my own country,” Diaz-Villalobos said. Now, she said, “I’m not safe here either.”
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