THURSDAY, AUGUST 1 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ M2 B3
THE DISTRICT
Man is fatally shot
in Southeast
A 26-year-old man was fatally
shot Tuesday night in the
Congress Heights neighborhood
of Southeast Washington,
according to D.C. police.
The victim was identified as
Anthony Hooks of Southeast.
Police said officers
responding to calls reporting
gunshots about 10:20 p.m.
found Hooks in the 1300 block
of Savannah Street SE, near the
Congress Heights Metro station.
A statement from police said
Hooks had been shot several
times. No arrests have been
made, and police did not discuss
a possible motive.
— Peter Hermann
Inmate charged in
additional assaults
A man serving 18 years in
prison for breaking into a home
in Northwest Washington and
sexually assaulting a woman at
knifepoint has been charged in
three additional burglaries and
sexual assaults that occurred in
2003 and 2007.
The new charges filed against
Levi Ruffin, 41, of Northwest,
were announced by D.C. police
and the U.S. attorney’s office
following a 29-count grand jury
indictment filed in June. Ruffin
was served arrest papers on
Tuesday while in prison.
Ruffin’s attorneys did not
respond to requests for
comment.
Authorities said the attacks in
which Ruffin is newly charged
involve strangers and occurred
in the Columbia Heights
neighborhood. The charges
include kidnapping while armed
and first-degree sexual abuse.
They occurred July 2, 2003, and
June 3 and Sept. 8, 2007.
In addition to those charges,
D.C. police said they have
charged Ruffin with first-degree
child sexual abuse, alleging he
engaged in sexual acts with a
juvenile between December
1999 and December 2000.
— Peter Hermann
VIRGINIA
Loudoun blaze
damages homes
About 75 firefighters
responded Wednesday morning
to a fire in Ashburn that
damaged at least two homes,
officials said.
No one was hurt in the two-
alarm blaze that broke out
about 3:20 a.m. in the 20200
block of Millstead Drive. The
cause of the fire is under
investigation.
Firefighters arrived to find
two houses on fire, with the
flames beginning to spread to a
third house, according to the
Loudoun County Fire
Department. Crews got into the
third home and stopped the
blaze from spreading further.
One firefighter suffered a
minor burn injury, officials said.
No one was in the two homes
and no civilians were hurt.
— Dana Hedgpeth
LOCAL DIGESTResults from July 31
DISTRICT
Mid-Day Lucky Numbers: 4-5-3
Mid-Day DC-4: 2-1-9-6
Mid-Day DC-5: 1-9-9-9-5
Lucky Numbers (Tue.): 1-8-0
Lucky Numbers (Wed.): 1-5-3
DC-4 (Tue.): 0-3-6-9
DC-4 (Wed.): 6-9-4-6
DC-5 (Tue.): 5-4-7-4-1
DC-5 (Wed.): 5-9-4-7-8
MARYLAND
Mid-Day Pick 3: 0-1-1
Mid-Day Pick 4: 8-6-3-8
Night/Pick 3 (Tue.): 1-8-5
Pick 3 (Wed.): 5-8-3
Pick 4 (Tue.): 5-8-8-6
Pick 4 (Wed.): 1-3-5-6
Match 5 (Tue.): 15-19-34-35-39 27
Match 5 (Wed.): 7-22-23-33-36 4
5 Card Cash: 3H-QD-KD-10D-9C
VIRGINIA
Day/Pick-3: 7-3-7
Pick-4: 8-1-4-9
Cash-5: 9-16-28-29-30
Night/Pick-3 (Tue.): 4-5-1
Pick-3 (Wed.): 0-3-6
Pick-4 (Tue.): 3-9-8-2
Pick-4 (Wed.): 8-6-8-2
Cash-5 (Tue.): 11-22-24-31-33
Cash-5 (Wed.): 3-11-15-22-32
Bank a Million: 16-20-28-35-36-40 *33
MULTI-STATE GAMES
Mega Millions: 10-24-28-33-38 *6
Megaplier: 3x
Powerball: 14-37-47-55-67 †6
Power Play: 2x
Bonus Ball **Mega Ball †Powerball
For late drawings and other results, check
washingtonpost.com/local/lottery
LOTTERIESAlan Rubin calls
the Biograph
Theatre a 29-year
film festival.
From its opening
in 1967 to its
closure in 1996,
the movie house
in a former Nash
automobile
dealership on
M Street in Georgetown was a
home for eclectic, independent
films you couldn’t see anywhere
else.
The Biograph was also, in its
way, an art gallery, said Rubin,
the co-founder who ran it until
the final credits. A piece of that
art — unseen for decades — is at
the AFI Silver Theatre and
Cultural Center in Silver Spring.
It’s a movie-mad mural that
once graced a hallway at the
Biograph.
“The Biograph had all these
posters,” said Allyn “AJ”
Johnson, who started working
at the theater selling
concessions when he was 14.
These were mostly “one-sheets,”
advertising posters measuring
about 27 by 41 inches. They’d
been piling up for years.
“What to do with them?”
Johnson said. “I decided to make
a collage.”
Rubin agreed to supply the
necessary materials and cover
his staff ’s payroll time.
It took them nearly a year to
scissor the faces, scenes and
titles from the posters, then
arrange them and glue them
onto half-inch plywood boards
with contact cement spray. The
panels were affixed to the wall
with strong adhesive. The effect
is like being dropped into a
blender of classic cinema, up to
about 1975.
There’s “Blazing Saddles” next
to “Jaws.” There’s Woody Allen’s
nebbishy face accessorized with
Tim Curry’s pouting, lipsticked
lips from “The Rocky Horror
Picture Show.” There’s Vegas-era
Elvis Presley singing into the
wrapper of a Mounds bar.
There’s the classic Disney
cartoon “Alice in Wonderland”
topped with. ... Who is that?
“That’s Barbarella,” Johnson
said. “I know that by heart.”
The Biograph lost its lease,
and the space became — of
course — a CVS. Rubin, who had
hung some of his own paintingsin the theater, became a full-
time artist. (“I am 46 years old,
but if you add in the shipping
and handling, I’m 82,” he said.)
Johnson — by that time a
contractor and developer —
returned to salvage the mural.
“I had my guys almost cut the
concrete wall to get it down,”
said Johnson, 61.
Said Rubin: “Over the 23
years since we closed, AJ and I
have had many discussions
about what to do with the mural
that he carefully wrapped and
stored at his residence.”
The AFI seemed a fitting
home. The mural is hanging in
the lobby, where it makes a
perfect counterpoint to
Quentin Tarantino’s “Once
Upon a Time in Hollywood,”
currently showing in Theater 1.Have a seat
For reasons that will soon
become clear, I asked Johnsonhis favorite place to sit in the
Biograph.
“Back row, left,” he said. “That
was my favorite spot. I also
watched a lot from the
[projection] booth. With ‘Pink
Flamingos’ we’d pack the
theater. Then I’d usually watch it
from the booth.”
I don’t know anything about
the booth at the AFI Silver, but I
do know about the seats in
Theater 1: They’re brand new,
replaced in July.
The 398 seats are very similar
to the ones installed in the
refurbished theater when it
reopened in 2003, but they’re
very different from those
originally in the space, which
dates to 1938.
“When it opened, there were
roughly 1,000 seats,” said Ray
Barry, director of the AFI Silver.
Of course, Americans were
smaller then.
The new seats rock a little,but they don’t recline, the way
so many do these days.
“We weren’t really interested
in providing sleeping
accommodation,” Barry said.
The seats do have cupholders,
which would have confused a
moviegoer from the 1930s.
There was no concession stand
then.
“Nobody believes that, but I
have the original drawings of
the theater,” Barry said.
Back then, there were only
two stalls in the men’s room and
two in the ladies.
“I don’t know how they
actually did that,” Barry said.Screen time
If you’re in the mood for old
movie houses, head to the
National Building Museum for
the exhibit “Flickering
Treasures: Rediscovering
Baltimore’s Forgotten Movie
Theaters.” The exhibit recountsthe rise and fall of that city’s
movie theaters, from tiny
screens erected temporarily in
storefronts to grand palaces
with uniformed ushers.
The exhibit is based on
photographs by Baltimore Sun
photographer Amy Davis, who
set out to capture what remains
of those old dreamscapes,
whether they were transformed
into churches or taken by the
wrecking ball.
In conjunction with
“Flickering Treasures,” the AFI
Silver is screening movies that
celebrate ... the movies. The
series continues Saturday with
“Have You Seen My Movie?”
Others include “The Blob”
(Aug. 10), “The Tingler” (Aug. 17)
and “Matinee” (Aug. 24).
[email protected]
Twitter: @johnkelly For previous columns, visit
washingtonpost.com/john-kelly.Freeze frame from D.C.’s old Biograph Theatre is back on display
John
Kelly's
WashingtonJOHN KELLY/THE WASHINGTON POST ALLYN JOHNSONBY PETER HERMANNA man authorities described as
homeless who was critically in-
jured Sunday afternoon during a
fight on a street in Southeast
Washington has died at a hospi-
tal, according to police, who said
they had made an arrest.
Authorities said part of the in-
cident on Randle Place in Con-
gress Heights was witnessed by
passengers aboard a Metro bus,
one of whom recorded it on a
phone and remarked, “He just
knocked him out,” as a person
stood over the prone man.
Police said that as the victim lay
unconscious in the street, six peo-
ple rummaged through his pock-
ets and stole personal items. An-
other grabbed the victim’s black
baseball hat, which was on the
street, and handed it to the man
who would later be arrested, po-lice said. Others then dragged the
victim onto the sidewalk.
Those scenes were captured on
audio-equipped video cameras
aboard the bus, which turned
onto Randle Place close to the
assault at 4:08 p.m. Police said the
first call to 911 came from a wit-
ness on the street at 4:11 p.m.
The reaction from bystanders
caught the attention of D.C. Police
Chief Peter Newsham, who is
dealing with a spike in killings
and is now left to question not
only violent crime but also the
motivations of the people who
witness it. “It’s disturbing to see,”
Newsham said of the bystanders.
“You would think people who saw
someone being assaulted, that
their first instinct would be to call
the police.”
The victim was identified as
Lucas Alonzo Thomas, 33. Police
said he had no fixed address. Apolice report lists an apartment
building in Southwest Washing-
ton and the Central Union Mis-
sion, a homeless shelter in North-
west, as possible living places for
him.
Deborah Chambers, the vice
president for development and
partnerships at the mission onMassachusetts Avenue, said rec-
ords show Thomas stayed at the
shelter for 15 days in 2017. She said
he told staffers he was single and
provided them his Social Security
number. She also said police noti-
fied the shelter of Thomas’s death.
Other than that, Chambers
said, “we don’t know any other
information about him.” About
1,000 people cycle through the
shelter each year. The Post’s ef-
forts to contact relatives were
unsuccessful.
Police said they charged Mi-
chael Anthony Grant II, 34, of
Southeast with second-degree
murder. His attorney with the
Public Defender Service did not
respond to a request for com-
ment.
A person who knew the victim
told police Thomas had been
drinking all day. Police said they
found Grant based on a descrip-tion from the video taken from
the bus.
Grant told police that Thomas
punched him as he walked by an
alley and then challenged him to a
fight for no apparent reason. He
told police he punched Thomas
back and he fell to the ground, the
affidavit says.
Police said in the court papers
that Grant was “hyped that he
was able to knock out the victim
with one punch” and that he “pro-
ceeded to celebrate by using his
cellular phone to record the dece-
dent on the ground and yell, ‘I’m
show time. Don’t play with me.
This is my neighborhood.’ ”
The affidavit says Grant later
admitted to hitting Thomas while
he was on the ground, saying “he
did not think it mattered how
many times he hit the victim since
he was punched first.”
[email protected]THE DISTRICTMan charged with murder after fatal altercation in Southeast
Allyn “AJ” Johnson, who helped create the collage, was 14 when he began working at Washington’s Biograph Theatre. The mural, a fixture
at the movie house, had been in storage since the theater closed more than two decades ago. It is now on display in the lobby at the AFI
Silver Theatre and Cultural Center in Silver Spring. At right is Johnson when he worked at the Biograph.“You would think
people who saw
someone being
assaulted, that their
first instinct would be
to call the police.”
D.C. Police Chief Peter NewshamBY LAURA VOZZELLArichmond — State elections of-
ficials have denied a belated re-
quest to put Del. Nicholas J. Freit-
as on the November ballot, a deci-
sion that could force the Culpeper
Republican to run as a write-in
candidate in a year when the GOP
cannot afford to lose any seats.
Freitas blasted the decision by
the state Department of Elec-
tions, vowing to appeal to the
state Board of Elections or, if that
fails, to run as a write-in candi-
date.
“I am not about to allow a
Department in Richmond to dis-
enfranchise the voters of the 30th
District by denying the same bal-
lot access they have granted to
other candidates,” he said in a
statement. “If that means mount-
ing a successful write-in cam-
paign in order to give the voters
an option, then that is exactly
what we will do.”
Freitas, considered one of the
party’s rising stars, did not face a
Republican primary challenger
this year. But the elections de-
partment said it did not receive
paperwork related to his candida-
cy on time.Freitas briefly bowed out of the
race in July in a tactical move that
paved the way for local Republi-
cans to designate him as a re-
placement candidate — some-
thing that is allowed when a nom-
inee drops out or dies.
But there was some
question about whether
he could be placed on the
ballot as a “replacement”
in a race that never had a
certified GOP candidate
in the first place.
The department an-
swered that question in
the negative in a brief
letter sent to the nomi-
nating committee last Friday. The
letter was obtained by The Wash-
ington Post this week under a
Freedom of Information request.
“All applicable deadlines have
passed and the Department is not
able to accept the form,” Election
Services Manager Dave Nichols
wrote.
Freitas said he intended to ap-
peal the decision to the elections
board when it meets Tuesday.
“The State Board has an oppor-
tunity on August 6th to vote to
allow a Republican to be repre-
sented on the ballot,” Freitaswrote. “Anything less than that
and they call into question years
of precedent and open them-
selves up to the very real charge of
putting partisan politics over the
people of the 30th District.”
A representative from
the elections department
did not respond to a re-
quest for comment.
If the department’s de-
cision stands, Freitas
would have to run as a
write-in candidate —
something that could
pose a significant hurdle
in a critical election year.
All 140 seats in the
state legislature are on the ballot
in November. Republicans have a
51-to-48 edge in the House of
Delegates and a 20-to-19 advan-
tage in the Senate, with one va-
cancy in each chamber.
A former Green Beret with a
libertarian bent, Freitas first won
a seat in the House in 2015. He has
been touted as an up-and-comer
who could help rebrand a party
that has not won a statewide
election since 2009. He narrowly
lost his party’s U.S. Senate nomi-
nation last year to Corey A. Stew-
art.Freitas represents a bright-red,
rural district that includes Madi-
son, Orange and Culpeper coun-
ties. President Trump beat Hillary
Clinton there by 61 to 34 percent
in 2016. Two years ago, as Demo-
crats picked up 15 House seats in
an anti-Trump wave, Freitas beat
Democratic challenger Ben Hixon
62 to 38 percent, despite being
outspent nearly 2 to 1.
But Freitas will face more of a
challenge this year if he has to rely
on voters to write in his name. He
would face Democrat Ann Ridge-
way, a former teacher and juve-
nile probation officer.
The elections department said
Freitas’s local Republican legisla-
tive committee never submitted a
required form indicating Freitas
was the party’s nominee. And Fre-
itas failed to submit another
form, which he personally should
have filed as a candidate, the state
said.
Bruce Kay, chairman of the
GOP’s 30th legislative district,
has said he emailed the nomina-
tion form to the state, but sent it
to an outdated email address. Kay
could not provide evidence that
he sent the email, saying he had a
problem with his computer thatcaused two years of email to be
lost.
As for the form Freitas should
have submitted, Kay said the state
normally would have sent a re-
minder to the candidate, but
since the first form was not re-
ceived, that did not happen.
The board was scheduled to
discuss Freitas’s case at a meeting
July 19, but Freitas withdrew his
candidacy the day before. The
move was meant to prevent the
board from disqualifying him as a
candidate.
Under state law, the legislative
district committee may nominate
a new candidate after normal
filing deadlines have passed if a
candidate withdraws or dies, but
the replacement cannot be some-
one the state board has disquali-
fied.
The committee met afterward
and nominated Freitas as a re-
placement candidate.
Kay said he filled out the requi-
site form and hand-delivered it to
elections officials in Richmond
the next day.
But in the letter sent Friday, the
department said it could not ac-
cept the paperwork.
[email protected]VIRGINIAState says it’s too late to add GOP lawmaker to the ballot
Freitas