A 15-year-old has been killed, and three others were wounded, after attending the D.C. Moechella music festival.
View this post on Instagram
“Several hundred people gathered for the Juneteenth advocacy and music festival called ‘Moechella,’ repeatedly referring to it as an ‘unpermitted event,” Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police Chief Robert Contee told reporters.
Contee explained that police were moved to break up the event after a fight initially broke out, followed by another incident that led to several people being “trampled and injured.”
Police recovered a firearm after the second incident, and soon after “shots were fired among the crowd.”
According to The Washington Post, four people were shot in total with “a bullet lodge in a police officer’s leg, two other adults were struck and injured, and Chase Poole, a 15-year-old in the seventh grade, was killed.”
#DCSHOOTING #MOECHELLA pic.twitter.com/FXWg2eWRjK
— Stanley E Wilson (@SEWINNOVATIVE) June 20, 2022
“We certainly want to make sure people are held accountable when they hold unpermitted events in our city,” Contee told reporters Sunday night. “This is one of the reasons why.”
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser also demanded for accountability while speaking at a press conference on Sunday night.
“We have a child who was killed today at an event that did not have any proper planning,” he said. “We need some accountability here.”
Moechella D.C. issued a public statement addressing the shooting this morning.
“We are deeply saddened by the tragedies that occurred in the hours following Moechella on June 19th, 2022. We send our condolences to the victims and their families affected by this senseless tragedy and hope for a healthy recovery to those that were affected,” the statement reads.
“Moechella has always been a peaceful demonstration of our constitutionally protected right of assembly and free speech under the 1st amendment,” the statement continues. “The purpose of this demonstration has always been to speak out against the social inequities of plaguing Washington D.C., like gun violence, the lack of resources for the underserved community, police brutality and the need for D.C. statehood.”
According to The Washington Post, the city’s homicide rate was up 13% from 2021, the year in which D.C. had more than 200 homicides for the first time in nearly two decades.
Poole is the fourth teen to die from gun violence in D.C. in the last seven days.
Police are still trying to determine the motive behind the shooting, as well as the weapons that were used. But did reveal that they found a firearm on Poole; however, they cannot conclude whether “he or others with him were targeted.”
Poole had already been shot twice and was detained on a firearms charge in March, according to police.
“Before you judge him, that he had a gun – he was a baby who was loved, cared about, who had a mother who was trying her best to try a combination of things to put her son on the right track,” Brookland Middle School counselor, Wendy Hamilton, said. “It may have been too late, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying.”
The names of the wounded victims have not yet been revealed, and the police have not yet identified a suspect.
