ABCDE METRO thursday, july 22, 2010 POSTLOCAL.com 82, 9 a.m. 90, noon 94, 5 p.m. 85, 9 p.m.


Obituaries Paul P. Cooke, 93, an early advocate of teacher training and a civil rights leader, is credited with revitalizing the D.C. Teachers College as president in the 1960s and ’70s. B5


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THE DISTRICT


Dwindling election panel The board chairman is stepping down before the primaries, and the mayor and council don’t appear to agree on how to preserve a quorum. B4


Find your Local Living section inside today’s Post. Passenger describes ‘free fall’ on United jet


Federal officials probing turbulence that injured 21


by Ovetta Wiggins


Deborah Atwood was soaked and shak- en up — but glad to be in one piece — af- ter experiencing what she described as a “free fall” on a United Airlines flight Tues- day night. Atwood, a resident of Northwest Wash-


ington, was one of 255 passengers on the jetliner that departed Dulles Interna- tional Airport headed for Los Angeles and experienced turbulence that injured 21 people. “All I could think of was the final scene


in ‘Thelma & Louise,’ ” Atwood said Wednesday, referring to the end of the 1991 movie when the two title characters fly off a cliff in a vintage convertible. “It was very scary.” The National Transportation Safety


Routine gun search led to suspected ‘serial killer’


by Matt Zapotosky


The big break in the investigation into the high-profile slayings of two sets of mothers and daughters in the Largo area last year came when federal agents who raided the house of a man suspected of stealing guns found additional evidence that eventually made him a suspect in the killings, law enforcement officials said Wednesday. The investigation and subsequent raid by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobac- co, Firearms and Explosives last July put the 27-year-old Largo man on police’s ra- dar because of items found in his house, including computer files, car keys and other items from break-ins around the area, law enforcement officials and other sources indicated. The man was indicted on federal car-


jacking, weapons and sex charges and is jailed while prosecutors prepare an in- dictment in one of the Largo slayings, law enforcement sources have said. “If we had to pick one moment in the


investigation that was kind of the turn- ing point, that was probably it: the search warrant on this guy’s house by the ATF,” said Maj. Andrew Ellis, a spokes- man for the Prince George’s County Po- lice Department. Detectives connected the man to at


least five killings and possibly more, au- thorities said. Prince George’s Police Chief Roberto Hylton said Tuesday that the man is a “serial killer” and that he is likely to be indicted within the month in connection with the killings of Delores Dewitt, 42, and her 20-year-old daughter, Ebony. Their bodies were found March 16, 2009, in a burning car in Largo that had been stolen that day. Hylton did not name the man because he is not yet charged. The man is also a suspect the slayings of Karen Lofton, 45, and her 16-year-old daughter, Karissa, who were found shot in their locked home Jan. 26, 2009, Hyl- ton said. Detectives are also investigat- ing whether he might be responsible for a 2008 killing in which a Bowie woman was shot before her home was set ablaze, among other crimes, he said. Special Agent Clare Weber, a spokes- woman for the ATF’s Baltimore Field Di- vision, said that ATF agents were simply pursuing a run-of-the-mill case for them — the May theft of guns from JC Arms in Woodbine, Md. — and that their in- vestigation led them to connect the sus- pect to the cases in Prince George’s, with the help of local detectives. “For it to potentially have turned into such a significant case that affects this community, that’s kind of why you want to go to work every day,” she said. Law enforcement sources have said the suspect was a “brilliant” criminal who studied forensic textbooks and changed his methods. The sources, as did others in this report, spoke on the condi- tion of anonymity because the man has not been indicted in any killings. zapotoskym@washpost.com


Staff researcher Meg Smith contributed to this report.


JAY PAUL FOR THE WASHINGTON POST


Lisa Lane says daughter Sadie, 5, right, should have the option to be more involved in the community. At left is Shelbi, 3. For more images of the Lanes and the Southeastern Virginia Training Center, go to PostLocal.com.


State facilities for the mentally disabled are all some families have by Henri E. Cauvin


chesapeake, va. — On a barren tract that backs up to Interstate 64, past a street sign that says “Dead End,” sits the entrance to a home that no par- ent would eagerly choose for a son or daughter. The Southeastern Virginia Training Center houses some of the state’s most profoundly disabled people, those who for decades had no option but to live in institutions.


Across the country, states have been closing such places for years, moving people with mental disabilities into community homes and out of the insti- tutions that defined care of the devel- opmentally disabled for much of the 20th century. Yet the training centers, seen by some families as the only alternative


for loved ones who have known little else, endure in Virginia, one of 11 states that have yet to close any of their insti- tutions.


Southeastern, which houses 133 peo-


ple ages 20 to 90, was going to be the first. But in a sign that Virginia’s path to deinstitutionalization will continue to be slow, the state broke ground last month on a $23.7million project to re- place much of Southeastern’s 36-year- old campus with a smaller, but still siz- able, compound. The fight to rebuild Southeastern has played out in painful, personal ways for families who have embraced the training center and families who want no part of it, all of them caught in a system with too many antiquated fa- cilities and too little money for com- munity care. “We should close them all,” said Charles Hall, a local mental health offi-


BARRY GUTIERREZ/ASSOCIATED PRESS The Boeing 777 bound from Dulles to Los Angeles was diverted to Denver Tuesday.


Board opened an investigation into the incident that caused Flight 967 to divert to Denver International Airport after ex- periencing trouble about 60 miles south- east of Kansas City, Mo. Federal officials said information from


the flight data recorder was downloaded in Denver and was at NTSB headquar- ters. Bill English, a senior air safety inves- tigator, will handle the inquiry from NTSB headquarters in the District, offi- cials said. Federal Aviation Administra-


tion spokesman Mike Fergus said the in- cident would be a “front-burner item” for the FAA and NTSB. Atwood said the turbulence at first was


no different than what she’s felt on other flights. But over the next three to five sec- onds, normal changed to something At- wood had never experienced. The plane jumped, then plummeted “like in an el- evator shaft.” People were flying out of their seats,


Atwood said. Glass and bottles were strewn throughout the cabin. The oxygen masks dropped from overhead. By the time it was over, Atwood, who said she was wearing her seat belt, was sore and drenched in water and wine. Atwood said the pilot then said the flight would be diverted and asked any- one onboard with medical experience to hit their call button. Scott Bookman, chief paramedic for the Denver Hospital Medical Center


turbulence continued on B5


N.Va. gold burglary case is


by Tom Jackman ‘We should close them all’


An investigation into dozens of gold burglaries in Northern Virginia last year, which collapsed after all but three charg- es were thrown out of court, has been re- vived by federal prosecutors in Alexan- dria, who have obtained an indictment against three New Yorkers who were first arrested in Fairfax County in the fall. Burglars targeted Indian and South


Asian families who kept gold and other valuables in their houses. Court records say that 37 homes were hit in Fairfax, Loudoun and Prince William counties over 10 months last year, with losses of more than half a million dollars. But when a task force investigating the cases arrested two men and a woman in the Clifton area in November, they had a po- lice scanner and burglary tools but no stolen property and nothing to link them to any specific break-ins. After preliminary hearings in Fairfax


and Loudoun district courts, 55 of the 58 charges against the three suspects and four other alleged co-conspirators in New York were dismissed. But the task force went back to work, and local pros- ecutors and Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II lobbied U.S. Attorney Neil H. MacBride to take up the case. The one-count indictment, for con-


spiracy to transport stolen goods across state lines, was handed up July 5 and un- sealed this week after one of the defen- dants, Melinda M. Soto, 34, of Queens,


gold continued on B5


cial in the Hampton Roads area. “But Virginia is very predictably conserva- tive when it comes to things like this.” The state’s pace suits some parents


just fine. Gene Sivertson leads the Par- ents and Friends of Southeastern Vir- ginia Training Center, and for years he and his wife, Ann Marie, have been among its most ardent defenders. The couple would not speak on the record about their efforts to keep Southeastern open. But in a short essay submitted this year to an advisory com- mittee on the training center’s future, Ann Marie Sivertson argued that com- munity care shouldn’t be the only op- tion available to families such as hers. “Realistically,” she wrote, “those of us who are blessed with abilities are tasked with the responsibility of pro- viding care for those who cannot care


southeastern continued on B8


‘A vicious, senseless’ killing


Chance encounter allegedly led to artist’s death in Montgomery


by Dan Morse


In one of her final acts, Azin Naimi, a world-renowned restorer of centuries- old Russian art, took a walk from her apartment in North Bethesda shortly af- ter dinnertime. Three blocks away was her tiny studio, in a low-slung industrial park that backs onto railroad tracks north of White Flint mall.


Already inside the building was Ray- mond Williams, authorities say. Naimi didn’t know he was there, they say, and Williams didn’t know she was coming. What happened next, according to


documents made public Wednesday and remarks made in court, was a brutal end to her 45 years. Williams, 35, of Kensington, allegedly


beat Naimi, stabbed her repeatedly with a pair of scissors — including a thrust into one of her ear canals — and broke two of her ribs. Authorities say he tried to clean up the scene with a mop and towels, washed her body, carried it to a sport-utility vehicle, drove to an alley in the District and dumped her body there. “This was a vicious, senseless, violent crime, with a desperate attempt by the defendant to cover up the crime scene,” Montgomery County prosecutor Ste- phen Chaikin said in court Wednesday. Williams, who worked as a handyman for a business connected to the studio


The 30-year-old Southeastern Virginia Training Center in Chesapeake, one of five such state-funded facilities in Virginia. slaying continued on B5 B DC MD VA S


JOHN KELLY’S WASHINGTON


Civility works for everyone A column on rules for tourists in Washington gets a mixed reaction, and some readers observe that the need to be more considerate of others begins at home. B2


revived U.S. STEPS IN AFTER


LOCAL CHARGES FAIL


String of 37 break-ins targeted Indians, South Asians


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