For three days, the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) didn’t issue a statement about a young man’s body found hanging from a tree near its Fourth District headquarters. District residents instead relied on footage that Eyone Williams gathered and posted online.
On the afternoon of April 13, shortly after a relative called him, Williams drove to Quackenbos Street NW, between Ninth Street and Georgia Avenue. As he recounted, that’s where he saw MPD officers setting up a perimeter, cutting the young man’s body from a tree, and discouraging onlookers from recording video and taking photos.
“That was pretty much how I discovered what had happened,” Williams told The Informer, “When they cut the body out of the tree, I ended up seeing the body on the ground.”
The Fight to Receive Documentation and Get Answers
Per MPD’s statement, officers found the 19-year-old Latino male unconscious and not breathing while hanging from a tree limb. The adult adolescent, who hasn’t been identified, was pronounced dead on the scene after attempts by D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services to revive him…