It was 21 days before the first homicide of this January in D.C. was recorded. But the city’s first homicide of February occurred Monday, on the month’s second day.
It appears premature to cite reasons for the disparity in time that elapsed before the first and only killing to occur in January and the relative brevity of the time before the first killing in February.
But it appears to show that an element of unpredictability lies behind homicide dates and statistics, and that an amount of randomness governs when and where killings occur.
February’s first homicide occurred at 2:55 a.m. in the 3100 block of 16th Street NW, police said.
The victim was a woman, said Officer Sean Hickman, a D.C. police spokesman.
Her name was withheld while police tried to notify her relatives, he said. No age was given.
The woman apparently died at the scene. No information was available immediately about any motive or suspect. The circumstances of the shooting were not described.
The 3100 block of 16th Street is a residential block at the western edge of the Columbia Heights area. It is just north of Irving Street and near the spot where 15th Street NW merges into 16th.
Last month, an 18-year-old high school student was found shortly after midnight Jan. 21 in a house on Varnum Street NW after being shot.
He was the only person fatally shot in the city in all of January. The 21 days before his killing constituted the longest period to elapse in many years before the city’s first homicide of the year.
A variety of factors have been cited to explain the recent decline in homicides, which reflects and extends a drop that characterized last year’s figures. The White House, the D.C. police chief and the D.C. Council have all claimed credit.
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