In an entirely unrelated article, the Gazette reports on allegations of prosecutorial and police fabrications of racism as motive for murder:
[...]
[Detric Lewarren Thompson, 28,]'s parents believe that Montgomery County Police have pinned the beating death on their son as retribution for him having avoided two other drug prosecutions last year, and said Thompson lives in Frederick County.
Acknowledging his son’s criminal record, Thompson’s father, Leo Thompson, is adamant that his son would not turn to violent crime, and is especially outraged by the suggestion that his son said he was targeting Hispanics in the burglary, as described in police charging documents.
When Thompson was arrested on March 8, he admitted to breaking into the apartment and to being on drugs, according to charging documents. The documents state that he told the arresting officer that he broke into the apartment ‘‘because Hispanics live there and I hate them. They are taking all our jobs.”
‘‘The Montgomery County Police Department has created a situation that’s racist. It’s racial and everything else you can imagine,” said Leo Thompson. ‘‘That whole thing makes it sound like we’re trying to start a race war. They made it up. And they did it so they could put somebody to a damn crime.”
[...]
Time will tell and a jury will decide as to the guilt or innocence of Detric Lewarren Thompson, in the matter of the Feb. 17 murder of Aureliano Evelio Miranda-Fuentes.
Moving right along, despite the statements in a recent candidate's forum event, by the Washington Post's endorsee for the office of County Council, District 4, more or less to the effect that "gangs are just children who like to dress funny and pretend to be dangerous", the Gazette reports on an allegedly gang-related shooting incident at Albert Einstein HS in Wheaton. An accidental discharge of a weapon brought to the attention of authorities that multiple handguns had been brought to school...
[...]
Five of the six students were charged. A 14-year-old boy, a 15-year-old boy and a 15-year-old girl, all from Silver Spring, were charged as juveniles. The 15-year-old boy was charged with first-degree burglary, theft over $500, reckless endangerment and a series of handgun charges, including unlawful possession of a regulated firearm with ammunition by a minor. The 14-year-old boy was charged with the same handgun-related charges. He was not charged with burglary or theft. They were taken to the Alfred D. Noyes Children’s Center. The 15-year-old female was charged with conspiracy to commit burglary.
Einstein students Jose Ramos, 16, of the 2500 block of Weisman Road in Silver Spring, and Geovani Lazabara, 17, of the 3900 block of Isbell Street in Silver Spring, were charged with three counts each of possession of a regulated firearm and possession of a regulated firearm by a minor, and one count each of illegal sale of a regulated firearm, carrying and⁄or transporting a handgun about their person, and carrying and possessing a handgun on public⁄school property.
[...]
(Lazbara, interestingly enough, lives in the exact same smallish neighborhood -- Connecticut Avenue Park, just south and east of Aspen Hill's Wheaton Woods neighborhood -- which was for a while home to Serial Bank-Robbing White Supremacists Richard Lee Guthrie and Peter Kevin Langan back in the 1970s. No reasonable person would even think of establishing a linkage, this is just co-incidence... or a neighborhood with deep problems.)
Allegedly the guns were to be delivered to one Raul Garcia, 20, of the 12000 block of Centerhill Street, just across Connecticut Avenue and a few blocks down the road, in the Connecticut Avenue Estates neighborhood. Garcia allegedly would find customers for the stolen firearms.
Allegedly, all of the individuals involved have ties to two different gangs.
The Washington Post coverage of the story is rather more detailed, says that police reported that there had been a fight near Einstein last week which took on aspects of a racial fight, and unsubstantiated rumors have been circulated that this was shaping up to be a gang war between elements of the Mara Salvatrucha -- an exceptionally violent transnational criminal organization with roots in Los Angeles and El Salvador, mostly notable for hacking people with machetes and for making friends and gaining the trust of their intended victims -- and an unspecified local African-American gang.
According the the Post reporting, police indicated that the handguns were burglarized "to make money". Astute readers may reasonably conjecture that the alleged burglars knew that people were looking to buy guns, and felt they could profit by serving a need. One may also reasonably suspect that other guns may already be wending their way to Wheaton -- as if there was any shortage of them there -- to find a ready hand to aim them at a fellow student at Albert Einstein HS, one of the most poverty-enrolling schools in Montgomery County.
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