More than 20 gunshots rang out near 13th Street and Columbia Road NW in Columbia Heights around 10:42 p.m. Sunday, sending Metropolitan Police Department officers and helicopters into the area — but when the search ended, there was no victim on scene.
MPD Third District officers responded to the 2900 block of 13th Street NW for a reported shooting and found evidence of gunfire, but no one had been hit, according to police. As PoPville reported, officers searched the alley on the 1300 block between Columbia Road and Harvard Street, while helicopters circled the neighborhood for a while. One resident told the outlet they called MPD’s non-emergency line about 30 minutes after the shots stopped.
A Pattern That Keeps Repeating in Columbia Heights
The gunfire fits a grim rhythm that has played out across Columbia Heights for months. Just three weeks earlier, a gunman fired near condos on the 1400 block of Columbia Road NW, with a bullet piercing a parked woman’s car in a shooting Hoodline covered. On August 4, 23-year-old Xavier Fogle was found shot to death near Meridian Hill Park on the 2600 block of 15th Street NW, just blocks from Sunday’s incident site, according to WUSA9.
And on July 27, a teenage boy was shot and killed outside a residential home in the neighborhood, prompting a homicide investigation, as reported by FOX 5 DC. Back in April, a barrage of more than 20 gunshots struck cars near 14th Street and Fairmont Street NW, an incident Hoodline detailed in its report on a late-night gunfire barrage. Sunday’s shooting once again left officers combing an alley for evidence with no injured party to be found.
Crime Data Tells a Mixed Story Citywide
The recurring gunfire comes as the District’s own crime statistics tell a complicated story. Reported assaults with a dangerous weapon in Washington, D.C. surged 39% to 40% year-over-year to nearly 800 reported incidents, even as total violent crime fell 20% and homicides dropped more than 30%, according to Metropolitan Police Department figures reported by Axios. That divergence — fewer killings but far more reported gunfire incidents like Sunday’s — has become a central tension in how officials and residents talk about safety in neighborhoods like Columbia Heights…