B6
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KLMNO Charges reviewed in fatal shooting
weigh suspect’s account of threat to third person
by Dan Morse
Montgomery County prosecu- tors could reduce or drop charg- es against a homicide suspect be- cause it appears that he shot a man who was about to shoot someone else, according to docu- ments made public Thursday and statements made in court. At the suspect’s bond hearing,
Assistant State’s Attorney Peter Feeney was granted a delay until Tuesday to give his office time to review the evidence. “In all can- dor to the court, there is a ques- tion as to the viability of these charges,” Feeney told District Judge Brian Kim. Arrest documents provide an account of what occurred just outside a house in Wheaton about 1 a.m. Wednesday. The sus- pect, Larry Lamont, 27, is ac- cused of firing multiple rounds at the victim, Marcus Duffin, 27,
Montgomery officials
who had a gun trained on the third man, according to the documents, which were written early in the investigation and rely heavily on Lamont’s version of events. Under Maryland law, a homi-
cide defendant can raise a “de- fense of others” argument at trial, and jurors are instructed to acquit if they determine that the suspect had a reasonable belief that the third party was in immi- nent danger of bodily harm, among other conditions. It is similar to a self-defense argu- ment. Lamont remains locked in the
county jail without bond, and he is charged with first-degree mur- der and use of a handgun in the commission of a crime of vio- lence. It is unclear whether he has re- tained an attorney. But his future may be aided by
his level of cooperation. At 2 a.m., an hour after the shooting, he went to a police dis- trict station in Wheaton, identi- fied himself to an aide at the front desk and said he had just shot someone down the street,
according to the charging docu- ments. Police arrested him in the lob-
by. He agreed to waive his Miran- da rights and started talking. According to Lamont, he was in a house in the 3300 block of Randolph Road when Duffin ar- rived, looking for the third man, whom Duffin had argued with several nights before. Duffin found him and pulled out a gun. “Lamont left the living room, and entered a rear bedroom, where he had previously secret- ed” a 9mm handgun, detectives wrote in a statement of probable cause to support the murder charge. “Lamont then returned to the living room, only to find that the dispute had moved out- side.” From the porch, Lamont
watched the two men argue heat- edly. As he told detectives, he saw Duffin again pull out a gun and point it at the man. “Lamont then opened fire with multiple rounds on Duffin,” detectives wrote. After talking to detectives
Wednesday morning, Lamont agreed to take them to the scene,
and he described the path on which he fled. On the path, detectives found the gun they think he used to kill Duffin, detectives wrote. Police also found a second gun at the scene. Duffin was hit with at least one round in the upper portion of his body and died at the scene. Detectives soon learned that
Lamont had a previous drug con- viction. And at the time, Wednes- day morning, detectives consid- ered it appropriate to charge him with first-degree murder, a po- lice spokeswoman said Thurs- day. Law enforcement sources, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case, said that although Lamont was helpful and contrite, he had admitted to shooting someone. Detectives and prosecutors are
examining Lamont’s version of events in light of other evidence. Two supporters of Lamont’s, be- lieved to be relatives, were at the bond hearing Thursday, but they declined to comment afterward.
morsed@washpost.com
Authorities seize $200,000 in narcotics in District by Stephanie Lee Armed with 46 arrest war-
rants, more than 200 police and drug enforcement officers round- ed up hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of narcotics in a citywide drug bust Thursday. Law enforcement officers also issued 21 search warrants, seized
seven guns and confiscated more than $200,000 worth of narcot- ics, which included cocaine, PCP, marijuana and Oxycotin, said of- ficials from the D.C. police and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration at a news confer- ence at the Kennedy Recreation Center in Northwest Washing- ton. The operation targeted Trini-
dad and the area around Rose- dale Street in Northeast and Sev- enth and O streets in Northwest, said D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. La- nier.
At least two of the arrests
made Thursday are connected to recent shootings, Lanier said, adding that “significant prog- ress” has been made in many of the investigations related to the
bust. “The arrests and the people we
targeted are involved in drug dis- tribution and much of the vio- lence that surrounds that drug distribution,” she said. The bust, which involved
about 240 officers, began about 5 a.m. Thursday and was expected to continue throughout the day.
lees@washpost.com
Victim’s lawsuit faces legal hurdles shooting from B1 Gerdak was at the Franconia
station because he was trying to help a drunk driver, whom he didn’t know. Koger pulled into the station’s front parking lot in his sport-utility vehicle, chasing another cabdriver. Gerdak said he went into the station to let po- lice know about the chaos out front. Gerdak alleges that the em- ployee working the front desk, who was not a police officer, had her feet up and was asleep. “She fell asleep watching TV,” Gerdak said. He said he knocked on the window until she woke up and told her, “There’s two crazy peo- ple chasing each other out front, a cab and an SUV.” Gerdak’s attorney, Katherine
Martell, has noted that a lookout had been broadcast after the ear- lier shooting of the cabdriver in Alexandria, in which the suspect fled in an SUV. And now another cab was being chased by an SUV. “She tells me,” Gerdak said,
“ ‘You need to go back outside and tell the cabdriver to call his own dispatcher.’ ” Fairfax police will not discuss the case because it is in litigation.
Sources familiar with the case dispute Gerdak’s account, but they would not speak on the rec- ord. Gerdak said he walked back to the parking lot and was standing next to the drunk driver when the SUV pulled in again with Koger behind the wheel. “I feel safe — I’m in front of a police station,” Gerdak said. “What could hap- pen?” Koger fired a hail of shots, wounding Gerdak four times and the drunk driver once. A sixth shot struck the cross around Ger- dak’s neck, in front of his heart, and ricocheted. Bullets ripped through Ger-
dak’s shoulder, his side (stopping next to his spine), his back and his upper leg. He has permanent nerve damage and continuing pain in all of those areas, which he is told will probably worsen as he grows older. None of that was on his mind
as he lay in the Franconia station parking lot. Koger walked over, menaced him some more and left. Gerdak pulled out his iPhone and dialed 911.
And waited. And waited. Min- utes may seem like hours to peo- ple waiting for help, but Gerdak
said the 911 calls show that at least 30 minutes passed. Gerdak said officers sat with him, plead- ing with dispatchers for help and fearful that they would watch two men die in front of a police sta- tion. Meanwhile, Koger had stepped out of his SUV more than a mile away and was in a shootout with Metro Transit Police and a Vir- ginia State Police trooper. Kroger eventually pleaded
guilty to multiple counts of at- tempted capital murder of a po- lice officer and aggravated ma- licious wounding, as well as to embezzlement from homeowner associations that were clients of his father’s company. He admit- ted stealing $3 million. Gerdak hired lawyers Chris
Schewe and Harvey Volzer, who filed suit against Koger in March 2009, but not against Fairfax County. Gerdak said the lawyers decided that he did not have a case against Fairfax, because the doctrine of “sovereign immunity” shields government officials from being sued for simply doing their job. An “act of omission,” such as failing to summon help, was deemed not enough to reach the gross-negligence standard need-
PETULA DVORAK FIV-positive cats deserve the best home possible dvorak from B1 Spike is pushing 14 years old.
He is getting thinner and more frail, the way older pets generally do, but he is an active and avid moth-chaser, his owner reports. Mouse was a robust feline until he was 16, his owner said. And Muffin reached 18. “I can
attest that I have had a very positive experience with an FIV+ cat,” said Muffin’s owner, Peggy Clark, who was one of a couple hundred cat lovers who e-mailed after I wrote a column about my decision not to adopt a couple of shelter kittens who tested positive for the feline virus. I’m no stranger to the passion
many people have for their pets. I’m that animalista who went to crazy lengths to care for my dogs. Before my husband and I had children, we spent much of our disposable income on the various maladies and escapades of our two rescued and troubled pups. A brain scan because a seizure means the hound could be epileptic? Ka-ching. (He was.) Surgery after busting through
a plate-glass window because the thunderstorm scared them? Ka-ching.
Extensive heartworm
treatment for the one we rescued two months before our wedding? Goodbye, flowers and fancy photographer. Hello, disposable cameras.
We loved those dogs madly. And when these dogs began to decline, we were the parents of two young sons. Two years ago, we learned that the older dog, 16, had cancer. It was a slow, messy death. And we went through it again earlier this year, when the second one died, dropping from 65 pounds to 28 pounds in a matter of months. My older boy
Was I ready for even a remote possibility of a sick animal again?
learned to wipe up bloody vomit, and both children learned to be gentle, to pet him where it didn’t hurt. Was I ready for even a remote possibility of a sick animal again? I asked myself that when my older son fell in love with the FIV kittens, Malcolm and Maguire, at the Washington Animal Rescue League. The staff there was wonderful in explaining the virus, that it doesn’t mean a death sentence for a cats, that it’s not transmittable to humans, that they can have a normal, healthy life span, and that there’s
even a chance they will eventually test negative, once their mom’s antibodies leave their blood. They even have a program that will provide lifetime, free medical care for them, as FIV-positive cats will be more vulnerable to ordinary illness and need to be taken in every six months.
I took the boys home and researched FIV, reading papers by various veterinary schools and discussing it all night with my husband. In principle, given that we stuck with those dogs and did right by them every time, we should stick with these kittens, right?
But there was the possibility
that we were not the best family for these cats. I haven’t had time to schedule my own physical since I last gave birth. I’ve had a pair of pants at the dry cleaners since Bush was in office. I don’t have time to take care of myself, let alone two needier souls. The shelter said they would
have to be indoor kittens. With two boys, two bikes, 28 balls, a scooter and a neighbor’s cat who is always visiting, the risks are high. One reader summed up our decision well: “You were right to walk. Two kids, two ill cats, too much!”
So we wound up finding a
kitten on Craigslist, where a family that had found a stray and
her kittens under their porch were trying to avoid taking the brood to the shelter, which might not have been a no-kill center, as the Washington rescue league is. We figured we were still rescuing a homeless creature. But I wondered what others would have done. I ended that column asking readers whether they would’ve adopted the kittens. I’m still getting angry e-mails from those who said they would — about 250 so far. There were some who thought I did FIV-positive cats a disservice by exaggerating their potential health risks. Others called me “vile” and said they hope my children abandon me if I become ill. “You have my vote for the stupidest person on the planet! You should not have any animals in your care. If your child contracts AIDS will you get rid of it? Karma is gonna rectify this for so many. You are just an idiot. Shame on the Washington Post for running the article,” one reader said. As for Malcolm and Maguire, I was sure that at least one of those 250 people went to the shelter and adopted them. So I called the shelter to see whether I could meet the person who did right by them. Turns out, they are still there, waiting for a home.
E-mail me at
dvorakp@washpost.com.
ed to overcome the immunity shield. Gerdak fired Schewe and Vol-
zer, who said he could not discuss the case. But by then, it was Feb- ruary 2010, and the deadline for filing the case had passed. Mar- tell sued Fairfax in May, and Fair- fax has moved to have the suit dismissed for being filed beyond the statute of limitations. Fairfax Senior Assistant County Attorney Karen L. Gibbons said she could not discuss a pending case. On Friday, Martell intends to argue that Gerdak was incapac- itated after the shooting and that the two-year clock should not have started ticking until Gerdak was at least out of the hospital and able to make decisions about a lawsuit, which was late May 2008.
If a judge grants that relief,
Martell still must convince a judge next week that Fairfax isn’t entitled to immunity, either be- cause of gross negligence or be- cause the shooting happened on police premises, a concept that a Circuit Court judge recently en- dorsed in the civil suit emerging from the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings.
jackmant@washpost.com
FRIDAY, JULY 16, 2010 OBITUARIES
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY
Mr. Blackwell was the first black tenured professor at Berkeley. DAVID H. BLACKWELL, 91
Prominent statistician broke color barriers
by Emma Brown
David H. Blackwell, 91, who rose from poverty in Southern Illinois to become one of the country’s most prominent statis- ticians and the first African American to be elected to the Na- tional Academy of Sciences, died July 8 at a hospital in Berkeley, Calif., of complications from a stroke. Dr. Blackwell was also the first black tenured professor at the University of California at Berke- ley, where he became chairman of the statistics department. A wide-ranging scholar, he was known as an elegant theoretician who made important contribu- tions to a number of fields, espe- cially in statistics and probability. His analysis of bluffing as a
poker strategy, as well as his re- search on dueling — using statis- tics to determine the most oppor- tune moment for a dueler to shoot — helped establish him as an expert in game theory. He conducted groundbreaking work on the mathematics of multistage decision-making that has been applied in defense and finance, and he wrote a textbook on Bayesian statistics, a method of incorporating knowledge about past events into predic- tions about the likelihood of fu- ture events. “I’m sort of a dilettante,” he was quoted as saying in “Math- ematical People,” a 1985 book of profiles and interviews. In 1986, he received one of the most pres- tigious honors in the field of sta- tistics, the R.A. Fisher award from the Committee of Presi- dents of Statistical Societies. David Harold Blackwell was born April 24, 1919, in Centralia, Ill. His father, who had a fourth- grade education, worked for the railroad, and his grandfather ran a store. Dr. Blackwell taught himself to
read at the store by examining the pictures and letters on seed packages.
At 16, he planned to become an elementary schoolteacher and entered the University of Illinois, where, at the time, there were no black professors. Six years later, he had discovered a passion for mathematics, earned a doctorate in that subject and won a fellow- ship to Princeton University’s In- stitute for Advanced Study. While at Princeton in the early
1940s, he sent job applications to 104 historically black colleges — working as a professor else-
Walter H. Brooks III D.C. EDUCATOR
Walter H. Brooks III, 94, a
longtime D.C. Public Schools em- ployee who retired in the early 1970s as administrator of the school system’s media center, which oversaw audiovisual equipment, died July 6 at his home in Silver Spring. He had cancer. Mr. Brooks worked for the
city’s recreation department after World War II before joining the school system. He was a health and physical education teacher at Langley Junior High School and taught and administered a physi- cal education program aimed at elementary school children. Throughout his career, he coached and officiated at youth track meets and team sporting events, often as a volunteer. Walter Henderson Brooks III was born in Montclair, N.J., and moved with his parents to Wash- ington in 1932. Two years later, he graduated from Dunbar High School. His paternal grandfather, the Rev. Walter H. Brooks, was the longtime pastor of the Nine- teenth Street Baptist Church in Washington. The younger Brooks graduated with a bachelor’s degree in health and physical education from Howard University, where he played track, football and basket-
where, he believed, wasn’t a pos- sibility. However, he was courted by
Berkeley and was nearly offered a job there until the idea met with protest from the wife of the mathematics department chair- man. She was a Texas native who liked to invite the math faculty to dinner occasionally, and she said she “was not going to have that darky in her house,” according to Dr. Blackwell’s recollection in an oral history interview. He joined the Howard Univer-
sity faculty in 1944 and became the head of the mathematics de- partment.
While in Washington, he be- came interested in statistics after hearing a lecture by Agriculture Department statistician Meyer A. Girshick. After Dr. Blackwell challenged one of Girshick’s as- sertions, the two met and became friends and colleagues. They wrote a 1954 book, “The
Theory of Games and Statistical Decisions.” It established them as leaders in the burgeoning field of game theory, which uses math- ematics to understand winning strategies in situations that can be applied to economics, biology, engineering, political science and international relations. Dr. Blackwell was again court- ed by the University of California. He became a Berkeley professor in 1955 and 10 years later was ad- mitted to the National Academy of Sciences. He was a member of numerous other professional or- ganizations, including the Insti- tute of Mathematical Statistics and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His wife, Ann Madison Black- well, died in 2006 after 62 years of marriage. Four of his eight children also preceded him in death: Julia Madison Blackwell, David Harold Blackwell Jr., Gro- ver Johnson Blackwell and Ruth Blackwell Herch. Survivors include four chil-
dren, Hugo Blackwell of Berkeley, Ann Blackwell and Vera Gleason, both of Oakland, Calif., and Sarah Hunt of Houston; a sister; and 14 grandchildren. Dr. Blackwell taught introduc-
tory- through graduate-level courses and mentored 65 doctor- al students in his career. “Why do you want to share something beautiful with somebody else?” he said in “Mathematical People.” “It’s because of the pleasure he will get, and in transmitting it, you appreciate its beauty all over again.”
browne@washpost.com
ball. He received a master’s de- gree in human relations educa- tion from New York University. He served with the Navy in the
Hawaiian Islands during World War II. He was a member of St. Augus-
tine’s Episcopal Church in Wash- ington, where he served on the vestry and altar guild. He was a founding member and chairman of a youth activity and mentoring program, the Southwest Youth Activities Task Force, and did vol- unteer work for homeless meal programs, all in Southwest Wash- ington. Through his 80s, he participat- ed in the Senior Olympics in long jump and swimming, among oth- er sports. He also enjoyed playing golf. His first wife, Charlotte Ken- drick, whom he married in 1940, died in 1998. Their son Walter H. Brooks IV died in the early 1950s. Survivors include his wife, Ver- na Cook of Silver Spring, whom he married in 2000; a son from his first marriage, Joseph K. Brooks of Washington; two step- daughters, Kathleen Cook of Cap- itol Heights and Linda Slaughter of Silver Spring; three brothers, Dr. Warren Brooks and William Brooks, both of Los Angeles, and Elmer Brooks of Bethesda; and a sister, Julia Wynn of Philadel- phia.
— Adam Bernstein
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