Three of four men charged with murder in the 2020 shooting of an 11-year-old boy during an anti-violence cookout in Southeast D.C. pleaded guilty to reduced charges Friday, admitting to manslaughter in the death of Davon McNeal, who police said was hit by a stray bullet when gang members opened fire in the neighborhood.
The family-oriented Fourth of July barbecue, in the Cedar Gardens section of Anacostia, was winding down at about 9:30 p.m. when the gunfire erupted nearby, police said. Davon, a sixth-grader and star running back for his youth football team, suffered a fatal head wound while walking from the cookout in the 1400 block of Cedar Street to a relative's home a short distance away.
The gathering, with a theme of community peace, had been organized by Davon's mother, Crystal McNeal, whose city job as a "violence interrupter" meant she spent her days with some of the District's most hardened criminals, mediating disputes and trying to persuade them to put down their guns.
"I don't care how many times I go to the grave site, how many times I pray, how many times I cry," she said Friday evening. "That is not going to bring my child back, and I go through that every day when these guys still get to talk to their loved ones on the phone."
The four defendants - described by authorities as members of a Cedar Gardens crew called the Crashout Gang - were arrested in the weeks after the killing and indicted Feb. 9 on first-degree murder charges by a D.C. Superior Court grand jury. When they appeared in court for their arraignments via closed-circuit video Friday, only one of the men pleaded not guilty. Lawyers for the others said their clients had reached plea agreements with the U.S. attorney's office in the District.
Christian Wingfield, 24; Daryle Bond, 20; and Marcel Gordon, 26, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter, and prosecutors, in return, said they would move for dismissals of the charges in the indictment, including murder. Under District of Columbia law, first-degree murder is punishable by life in prison with a mandatory minimum of 30 years, while voluntary manslaughter carries a maximum term of 30 years with no mandatory minimum. The U.S. attorney's office said the deals call for sentences in the range of 7 12 to 10 years.
Crystal McNeal said she was unaware that the three men planned to plead guilty Friday and was angered by the sentencing recommendation in the plea agreements, which she considers lenient. She said the prison terms should be far longer.
The U.S. attorney's office said in a statement that "the senseless shooting" of Davon "shocked our community," but prosecutors declined to comment on specifics of the case.
"These plea agreements followed a thorough investigation and analysis of the events of that tragic night," the statement said, adding that prosecutors analyze "many factors in plea discussions, including the facts of the case, the evidence, the investigation, relevant case law, and concerns of the victim's family."
The remaining defendant, Carlos General, 21, pleaded not guilty to murder, conspiracy and weapons charges. The four are held in the D.C. jail, with General awaiting a trial and the others scheduled to be sentenced June 3.
Davon was among at least five children, none older than 11, fatally shot in D.C. since 2018, a period in which the city's annual homicide totals have nearly doubled, reaching 226 last year. "We just had a real genuine kid who wanted to get out of the neighborhood," Davon's football coach, Kevin McGill, said after the shooting. "These kids' lives are being robbed over nothing."
Among other evidence against the defendants, authorities said, homicide detectives interviewed an eyewitness who reported seeing four or five men shooting, possibly at a group of rivals, on Cedar Street at the time Davon was killed. Police found 19 shell casings at or near the crime scene and determined that the cartridges had come from five handguns, according to an affidavit filed in the Superior Court. It does not say which defendant allegedly fired the fatal shot.
The witness, who knew four of the men, identified them by their nicknames - Cel, Fats, Crank and Los - and later picked their mug shots from photo arrays, the affidavit says. It says Cel was Marcel Gordon, Fats was Daryle Bond, Crank was Christian Wingfield and Los was Carlos General. Their crew, the Crashout Gang, had been involved in a long-running dispute with another gang, called Choppa City, and those hostilities might have precipitated the Fourth of July gunfire, authorities said.
Although no firearms were recovered when the men were arrested, the affidavit says, laboratory tests on the shell casings showed that the handguns they came from had been previously fired in the city, based on cartridges found at earlier crime scenes.
One of the weapons, a .45-caliber, had been used in three shootings, including a homicide, in June 2020, days before Davon was killed. Another, a 9mm, had been used in two previous shootings. Another, also a 9mm, had been used in a homicide a month before Davon was shot. The remaining two pistols, both .40-caliber, had been used in shootings in which no one was hurt. None of those incidents had resulted in an arrest, the affidavit says.
The Washington Post