8 shootings and 4 stabbings during violent weekend in the District
WASHINGTON - Summer is still a few months away, but the warm weekend brought on a wave of violence across three of the four quadrants in Washington D.C. There were a total of eight shootings and four stabbings - one of them deadly.
Last Friday, there were three stabbings in Northeast D.C.
- 600 block of 19th Street, NE
- 700 block of 21st Street, NE
- 500 block of 55th Street, NE
There was also a shooting across the river in the 3300 block of 23rd Street in Southeast D.C.
On Saturday, things got even worse with five shootings happening in Northeast and Southeast D.C.
- Two male victims shot at 53rd Street and B Street in SE
- 800 block of Bladensburg Road, NE
- 1400 block of Florida Avenue, NE
- 3000 block of Stanton Road, SE
- 4900 block of Just Street, NE
On Saturday night, 38-year-old Dimas Fuentes-Lazo was stabbed to death in the 800 block of Kennedy Street in Northwest D.C.
The weekend rounded out with another two shootings on Sunday.
- 900 block of Division Avenue, NE
- 3000 block of 8th Street, NE
And as the warm weather continues, community leaders fear things will only get worse.
"It seems like we're in Iraq," said ANC commissioner Paul Trantham. "We're in a war zone in D.C. That's just sickening."
Trantham added, "People may say they don't want them, but I do think we need the 'jump-outs' back out here. In order for these guns and this violence to stop the way it is going, we need somebody out here - the ATF, whoever - we need them back out here to patrol our neighborhoods, our communities. We need the community back out here."
Trantham has been struggling to figure out what can be done to put a stop to the growing violence.
"We've done the marches," he said. "We've done the social economics. We've done the go-go scene. We've come out and had barbecues. That doesn't help them. That's not the method. I don't think that's the solution. Right now, it's so far gone, I don't even know what the solution is right now because everything that we try, it's just not working."
Saturday's fatal stabbing has brought the city's homicide count to 32. That is one more life taken than last year at the same time.