D.C. police on Wednesday announced an arrest in the 2009 killing of Emmanuel Durant Jr., a 19-year-old whose life and death became the subject of a critically acclaimed documentary for showing the systemic factors behind the struggles of a family that lived just 17 blocks from the U.S. Capitol.
Randolph Thomas Jr., 40, of Southeast Washington has been charged with first-degree murder in Durant’s death. Court records show he pleaded guilty in 2014 to killing another man on the same day that Durant was shot to death. He was released from prison last Wednesday, according to a spokesperson for the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Two days later, he was arrested in Durant’s slaying.
In a text message, Thomas’s attorney Todd Baldwin said, “We are looking forward to having his day in court and will ask for everyone’s patience to allow the criminal justice system to work its course.”
Durant was shot inside a residence in the 200 block of Webster Street NE on New Year’s Eve in 2009. Police said in charging documents that the shooting happened after two assailants confronted a person, put a gun to their head, demanded money and drugs, forced that person into their house and then demanded to know who else was inside. That person, according to police, told them Durant was upstairs and may have some money.
That person, who was not named in court documents, told police that they saw an assailant demand money from Durant at gunpoint, observed a “tussle over the gun” and then heard a gunshot. The person said the assailants also fired at them. An infant was in the room and several people were upstairs, the person told police.
In a separate case, Thomas pleaded guilty to shooting Chardale Bowe twice in the head while sitting in a car in the 4800 block of North Capitol Street NE on Dec. 31, 2009.
A ballistic comparison found that the bullets that killed Bowe and Durant were fired from the same gun, police said in charging documents.
Thomas, who made his initial appearance Saturday in D.C. Superior Court, did not enter a plea and was ordered held without bond pending a Nov. 14 preliminary hearing.
