A group of teens who confessed to robbing, stabbing and killing 18-year-old Olijawon Griffin last year at the Woodley Park Metro station learned their fates Friday.
Chavez Myers, who was 17 at the time, will spend the next 30 years in prison. His co-defendants, ranging in age from 15 to 19 years old, were also sentenced.
All six will have to serve five years of supervised release after they get out of prison.
A witness who was with Griffin said he first encountered the group of teenagers at a McDonald’s in the 1800 block of Columbia Road shortly after midnight.
Griffin told the witness he was going with the teenagers to buy marijuana, at which point the witness went to the bathroom.
When the witness and the other victim caught up with Griffin again after leaving the McDonald’s, he told them he had been beaten and robbed at gunpoint of his iPhone and Helly Hansen jacket, which can retail for $300.
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The three of them proceeded to the Woodley Park Metro Station, where they encountered the group of 10-12 teenagers again, and Griffin demanded his jacket be returned, according to a court document.
Griffin and the witness took the escalator up toward the station manager as the teenagers began to beat the other victim, but Griffin went back to aid the other victim as the witness asked the station manager to call police.
According to the court document, security camera footage shows Griffin and one of the teenagers engaged in a fistfight before Myers approached from behind with a knife and stabbed Griffin in the chest.
About 45 minutes later, just after 2 a.m., Griffin was pronounced dead at George Washington University Hospital.
“I lost a son,” Lunette Griffin said. “I can never get my son back, and they just don’t know how hard it is for me to go on.”
