Newsham: Police make 1 arrest after teen girl, man shot in Northeast DC
WASHINGTON - D.C. Police Chief Peter Newsham said an arrest has been made in the shooting of a 17-year-old girl and a man in Northeast D.C.
Newsham broke the news of the arrest Friday on FOX 5 News Morning. He said the suspect, 21-year-old Philip McDaniel, was arrested Friday morning. McDaniel faces assault with intent to kill charges. Newsham said police are still looking for two additional suspects they believe are connected with the shooting.
The shooting took place at around 3:30 p.m. Thursday at Saratoga Avenue and Montana Avenue as the 17-year-old girl was driving her vehicle in the area. She was taken to the hospital in critical condition while the male victim is expected to recover.
According to the police report, two men were hiding in the bushes on the side of the road before opening fire at a group of people across the street. The 17-year-old just happened to be driving by at the time of the shooting. A second person who was on foot was shot in the backside.
Newsham called the situation "tragic" and said that he had an opportunity to speak with the family of the teen victim.
"This is a young lady who is very excited about starting her college career down in Florida in just about ten days, and now she's in a hospital struggling for her life," Newsham said.
Neighbors told FOX 5 that the teenage victim had recently graduated from a local high school and she and her mother just returned from a trip to Florida to take a look at the campus she was set to head to this fall. The neighbors described her as sweet and driven.
Chief Newsham said the circumstances surrounding the shooting on Saratoga Avenue were similar to another recent shooting in Southeast D.C. where the victim was caught in the crossfire.
"Anything that the public can do to assist us in bringing them to justice -- we would appreciate," Newsham said.
Newsham said that while crime is down in the District, incidents like these need to stop.
"Even though we're having these significant reductions, you have one incident like this and nobody wants to hear about the reductions," he said. "They want this thing to stop and so do we!"
Newsham added, "Sometimes people want to blame the police when things like this happen. We're on the community's side This is something that we're not going to tolerate as a police department. We're going to stand there hand in hand with the community until we put an end to this stuff in our city."
Newsham said the public has helped the department tremendously as far as tipping officers to the whereabouts and identities of crime suspects.
"The most valuable thing in policing is our relationship with our community," the police chief said. "Because once you have that feedback, once we're all working together and we're all working in the same direction, you see the types of reductions that we're seeing in our city."