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The decade-old fatal shootings of Anthony Weathers and Vernon Davis occurred nearly a year apart, less than two blocks from each other in Northeast Washington’s Eckington neighborhood.
Homicide detectives long thought the killings in 2012 and 2013 were related and had even identified possible suspects early on, according to arrest warrants filed in D.C. Superior Court.
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But it wasn’t until years later, on Thursday, that police charged someone in each crime. The arrest warrants filed in both cases say an imprisoned police informant — unnamed in court documents — recently provided information that added crucial context to evidence detectives had accumulated over the years.
And police hinted at a sinister theory of the second case. Davis was shot, according to witnesses, because he had seen Weathers get killed a year earlier, then “responded” to a grand jury subpoena.
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Police announced this week that they charged Deangelo Opey, 31, with second-degree murder in the shooting of Weathers, 25, on Halloween night 2012 in the 2000 block of 4th Street NE. Gregory Smithwick, 31, was charged with first-degree murder in the Sept. 13, 2013 shooting of Davis, 34, in the 1900 block of 3rd Street NE. Police said all four were acquaintances.
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Opey’s attorney with the D.C. Public Defender Service did not respond to an interview request. Smithwick’s attorney also did not respond. Efforts to reach relatives of Davis and Weathers were not successful on Friday.
Police stated in the warrant that they had long suspected Opey in the killing of Weathers. One witness told police early in their investigation that Opey accused Weathers of stealing a firearm from him, according to the warrant. The witness told investigators that he saw Opey tuck a gun into his waistband moments before he saw the mortally wounded Weathers stagger across a street and collapse, the warrant says.
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The arrest warrant says the imprisoned informant told police years after the shooting that he saw Smithwick and Davis emerge from an alley after Weathers had been shot, the warrant says. The two got into the informant’s vehicle, and Smithwick claimed Opey had just killed Weathers, according to the informant’s account.
When Davis was fatally shot 11 months later, he had on him a card given to witnesses who are subpoenaed by a grand jury, the arrest warrant says. The imprisoned informant told police that Davis “was an eyewitness to the shooting” of Weathers and that he had been “killed by Greg Smithwick for his perceived testimony in the Weathers’ murder investigation.”
Several people told police at the time of the killing that it was well known that Davis had been in contact with law enforcement because he had been served the subpoena “in a public area,” the warrant says. One person told police that Davis was “hot” because he had gone to “555,” shorthand for the U.S. attorney’s office for D.C., the digits corresponding to the building’s numerical address. The warrant does not identify who served Davis the subpoena.
Witnesses told police that people wanted Davis dead “because they thought he was snitching.” The imprisoned informant told detectives Smithwick called him after Davis had been killed and said, “I just killed Vernon,” according to the warrant.
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