Calvin Larts, a 76-year-old deacon, was taking out the garbage at his church Wednesday morning when he heard gunfire and ducked behind a trash bin.

       “It was so quiet,” said Larts, a deacon at the Isle of Patmos Baptist Church, at 12th Street and Rhode Island Avenue in Northeast Washington. “It changed in an instant.”

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       Less than 300 feet away, D.C. police said, a man was shot and critically injured shortly after 9:30 a.m., near an apartment building in the 1200 block of Brentwood Road NE.

       That was one of at least seven shootings that have left six people injured and at least two dead across the District since Tuesday morning. No arrests had been made in any of the cases.

       Homicides in the District, which had been down in April, are now 2 percent ahead of last year’s pace, with 67 recorded as of the end of day Tuesday. Nine people have been slain in D.C. in the first 11 days of May.

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       The shootings include several that occurred in a 90-minute span Tuesday night in Southeast and Southwest Washington.

       About 8:05 p.m. Tuesday, police said, two men were shot in the first block of Galveston Place SW, near the city’s southern tip. Police said Deonte Pittman, 19, of Southeast was found wounded inside a building and died at a hospital. The other man had injuries not believed to be life threatening.

       Homicides soar in District, Maryland suburbs in 2021

       A man was wounded in a shooting about 9:15 p.m. Tuesday in the 600 block of Malcolm X Avenue SE in the Congress Heights area.

       About 15 minutes later, police said, a man was fatally shot in the 2600 block of Stanton Road SE, near Suitland Parkway. Police said the shooting occurred inside a residence, and they identified the victim as James Curtis, 38, of Southeast.

       Minutes after midnight early Wednesday, police said, a man was wounded in a shooting in the 1400 block of Montana Street NE, near the Brentwood and Langdon neighborhoods along Rhode Island Avenue.

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       Police said the victim went on his own to a hospital and later reported he had been shot outside his residence while walking to a vehicle to pick up a food delivery. He told police a passenger in a passing vehicle shot at him.

       The shooting later Wednesday morning on Brentwood Road occurred three blocks from the shooting on Montana Street. Police said they did not know whether there was a connection.

       Police said that the man was shot just off Rhode Island Avenue, a typically busy road, and that they were looking for a dark gray Honda Accord with paper license plates and tinted windows.

       Larts, a deacon for 10 years, said he was in the back of the church with the trash when he heard rapid pops from a gun. “I didn’t know where it was coming from,” he said.

       The deacon, who served in the Vietnam War with the 82nd Airborne Division, said the gunfire sounded familiar. He remained hunkered down for nearly a minute after the noise had subsided, then rushed back into the church. He said he did not see the person who was struck.

       Larts noted past violence in the area and said the church has had to reschedule nighttime events for daytime hours to keep visitors out of harm’s way.

       On Wednesday morning, even putting out the trash turned dangerous.

       “You don’t know where those bullets are going,” Larts said.