Police make arrest in Halloween night fatal shooting

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By Jeffrey Anderson THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Metropolitan Police have made an arrest in the Halloween-night fatal shooting of a 19-year-old Southeast man.

Police on Friday charged Darrell Calvin Lee, 21, of Southeast Washington, with first-degree murder in connection with the killing of Ashton Hunter, 19.

Last week, the city's Department of Youth Rehabilitative Services (DYRS) confirmed that Hunter was under the agency's supervision when he was fatally shot at around 8 p.m. Oct. 31 in the 300 block of 37th Street in Southeast. Police said Hunter lived on the block where the shooting occurred.

D.C. government records obtained by The Washington Times show that Hunter's legal guardian was a relative, though not his birth mother or father. Hunter previously resided in Northwest's Shaw neighborhood, near 7th and O streets. He attended Cardozo High School.

According to the records, Hunter had an extensive history of juvenile criminal charges dating to 2003. The record included more than 20 assault, gun and theft-related charges. In 2007, he was charged with first-degree murder. The case was dismissed as part of a plea bargain.

Hunter also had an extensive history of enrollments at various youth-program and treatment facilities. He was last treated in March at Maryland-based Mountain Manor Treatment Center, a residential facility for youths with alcohol and substance abuse problems, the documents show. That same month he also had been admitted to the Psychiatric Institute of Washington.

Hunter was committed to Oak Hill Youth Center in Laurel in 2004 when he was 14. He was committed to Oak Hill, D.C.'s defunct youth detention facility, nine times between 2004 and 2007.

DYRS closed Oak Hill in 2007 and built a new facility, New Beginnings Treatment Center, on the same campus.

"Although any one death of a youth in our care is too many, the percentage of youth in DYRS' care who are homicide victims is down substantially over the previous five years," Reggie Sanders, spokesman for DYRS, said last week.

Two youth intervention groups had also worked with Hunter, the documents show: Peaceoholics, in 2007, and Alliance of Concerned Men, in 2008.

Hunter's relatives could not be reached for comment.