Washington, D.C. is on track to hit the highest number of homicides the city has seen for two decades, The Washington Post reports.
According to the Post, D.C. has recorded 161 homicides so far in 2023, an increase of more than 25% when compared to the same time span last year. In those seven months, D.C. saw more homicides than it had in the entirety of 2018, and the newspaper notes that the city is on the path to having its deadliest year in more than two decades.
The city saw multiple deadly shootings over the weekend, including two separate incidents on Saturday, each of which killed three people.
“Our detectives continue to investigate the circumstances and the motive behind both shootings,” Paris Lewbel, the deputy director of communications for the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, said in a statement. “At this time, we don’t have any additional information to release to the public, but our detectives are asking the community’s assistance to provide anything they may have seen or heard.”
U.S. Attorney for D.C. Matthew Graves recently said during a community event hosted by the city’s police department that “our office, the Metropolitan Police Department, and our federal law enforcement partners are completely aligned in what we need to do in response to this crisis – and that’s to go after the individuals that we know to be driving violence, and not simply wait for bad things to happen and try to close cases afterwards.”
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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