DC Police Close Trinidad Teen Slaying Case
Four of five suspects in custody
By MATTHEW STABLEY
Updated 7:35 PM EST, Wed, Dec 3, 2008
WASHINGTON -- Several men are under arrest in connection with the slaying of a 13-year-old in D.C.'s Trinidad neighborhood.
Alonzo Robinson was shot and killed early on July 19. He was in town with his mother from Alabama to visit his great-grandmother, Dolores Redrick, who was undergoing chemotherapy for lung cancer.
Mayor Adrian Fenty and D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier held a news briefing Wednesday morning to announce a closure in the case. On Tuesday, 18-year-old Antonio McAllister and 19-year-old Joshua Benton were arrested and charged with first-degree murder.
McAllister and Benton are two of five suspects in the case, police said. One suspect was arrested several weeks ago. That suspect pleaded guilty and cooperated with police, which led to Tuesday's arrests and the identification of two other suspects. One of those suspects is in custody in Prince George's County on unrelated charges, and the other is at large, police said.
"I am so happy that they finally caught the ones that did this," Redrick said.
Alonzo fell victim to a shooting spree that Lanier described as an attack on the Trinidad neighborhood. One of the suspects allegedly was beaten up at a Prince George's County nightclub by a person or persons from Trinidad. That prompted random shootings and robberies of several people in Trinidad, police said.
The suspects are members of the Kenilworth-Parkside gang, according to court documents, and their plan was to drive through Trinidad shooting and robbing bystanders.
This spree of robberies and attacks prompted the controversial checkpoints in Trinidad, Lanier said. Those checkpoints were set up to protect the neighborhood from more attacks, and police said they obtained additional information about the case through those checkpoints.
First Published: Dec 3, 2008 11:58 AM EST
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