The Washington Post - 20.02.2020

B4 ez re the washington post.thursday, february 20 , 2020

BY DAN MORSE

The homicide case against the daughter of a George W. Bush-era Cabinet official diverged into op- posing narratives this week as prosecutors and defense attorneys described what they s ay h ap- pened inside a rockville Airbnb last week. “This was a violent, unpro- voked attack upon a friend,” montgomery County Assistant State’s Attorney Donna fenton said in court, asserting that Sophia Ne- groponte, 27, stabbed and cut Yousuf rasmussen, 24, numerous times in his neck, chest and face. “She was not the initial aggressor,” countered defense attorney Andrew Jezic. “A t most, whatever happened was that she felt, in her mind, that she needed to protect herself.” A college student who had struggled with alcohol abuse, Ne- groponte stands charged with first-degree murder in the feb. 13 death of rasmussen inside a small residence, blocks from rockville’s downtown area, according to authorities. The two were there with a third friend, w ho saw Negropon- te get a knife from the kitchen, according to police. The friend saw Negroponte stab rasmussen, authorities said. She then yelled “I’m sorry!” to him, took the knife out of his neck and pleaded for him not to die, police wrote in charging documents. “Yousuf was a kind and loving person who brought our family great joy in his 24 years of life,” rasmussen’s f amily said in a statement Thursday. “We grieve his loss.” Police are still investigating what p receded the altercation a nd what could have motivated it. “I don’t know what happened,” montgomery County District Judge Patricia mitchell said Tues- day while weighing whether to allow Negroponte to be released on bond. “I do know that some- thing happened that caused an otherwise affable, pleasant, f amily-oriented young woman to create a circumstance that result- ed in the d eath of another person.” The judge ultimately sided w ith prosecutors and ordered that Ne- groponte be held without bond. Negroponte is due in court again on march 13. She is the daughter of longtime diplomat John Negro- ponte, 80, who was appointed in 2005 as the nation’s first director of national intelligence by Bush. “We are grieved not only for young Yousuf, but for his entire family,” John Negroponte said in court this week. Interviews with those close to rasmussen describe a polite, cheerful young man, and t hey cast deep doubts on the assertion by Sophia Negroponte’s attorneys that h e could d o anything t o make her feel she needed to arm herself with a knife. “No way,” said Payton Patter- son, who met rasmussen several years ago when they were stu- dents at m uskingum University in New Concord, ohio. “one of the

most selfless, respectful, cultured people I’ve ever met.” Patterson and rasmussen an- nounced sporting events over the radio during college and hosted a weekly soccer program at 6 a.m. Patterson remembers lumbering over to rasmussen’s dormitory to pick him up and always being greeted with a big s mile. “A ren’t y ou tired?” P atterson remembers asking him once as they walked to the studio. “Don’t get me wrong,” rasmussen replied. “I am tired. But it’s a mental thing.” At the athletic department, newly hired soccer coach Adam Ponder detected the s ame attitude when rasmussen stopped by to discuss volunteering as an assistant student coach. Ponder made it clear there w ould be some g runt work involved — moving cones, washing uniforms — to which rasmussen didn’t b at a n eye. “A g reat kid,” Ponder recalled. In his office Wednesday, the coach was preparing remarks he would be making at a memorial gathering on the campus. He’d collected a text message from an assistant coach that had been sent by rasmussen. “I always want to help a nd l earn from you and the guys,” rasmussen had texted. “I love the game and am willing to do my best to help t he team.” rasmussen, whose family lives in Bethesda, had earlier attended the Lab School in Washington. He graduated in 2013, one y ear ahead of Negroponte, a school spokeswoman said Wednesday. During a court hearing Tues- day, about a dozen family and friends came to support Negro- ponte. “my husband and I adopted Sophia 27 years ago from an or- phanage in Honduras,” her mother, Diana Negroponte, said. Diana Negroponte said her daughter recently completed an alcohol t reatment program. “A t no time did she show violence to- wards her fellow patients,” she said. “Her dream was to be a nurse. Her dream is to be a nurse.

... S ophia asked to try to live
independently of us, and within
eight days of that independence,
this ghastly night occurred and
her friend d ied.”
Around 10 p.m. on feb. 13, po-
lice said, a friend of Negroponte
and rasmussen’s arrived at the
small dwelling and found they
had both been drinking. The
friend later told investigators, ac-
cording to charging documents,
that he made a round of margari-
tas and the three watched televi-
sion.
Sophia Negroponte and ras-
mussen began bickering, the wit-
ness s aid, and at o ne point started
wrestling on the floor, according
to a police a ffidavit.
In court on Tuesday, fenton
said rasmussen left the dwelling
and came back to look for his
cellphone. Negroponte “took a
knife out of the drawer, un-
sheathed the knife and lunged at
the victim,” fenton said.
Under questioning by detec-
tives, Negroponte confirmed
parts of the witness’s account, ac-
cording to police. She said they
had argued “over a silly issue,”
calmed down and then it heated
back u p, court documents said.
[email protected]

MarYLaND

Suspect in Montgomery

knife death denied bond

Defense lawyer says Sophia Negroponte was not the initial aggressor

BY PETER HERMANN

D.C. police have charged a 5 4-year-old man with accosting a woman at gunpoint eight years ago and sexually a ssaulting her in a building stairwell near Union Station. A police spokeswoman said the man is also a suspect in another sexual assault that occurred in 2013, outside a restau- rant a few blocks from the attack in 2012. The man has not been charged in the 2013 case, but police said their investigation continues. The suspect was identified as Joseph Evans, of no fixed address. Court records show he is at St. Elizabeths Hospital undergoing psychiatric evaluation following his arrest in 2018 on a charge t hat he stole $100 from a person in Adams morgan. Evans’s attorney, l isted in court records as Anthony Eugene Smith, could not be reached for comment Wednesday. A hearing in the theft case is scheduled for later this month. The attack on Sept. 24, 2012, occurred about 10:30 p.m. on K

Street NE, a half-block east of North Capitol Street and two blocks north of the train station. A police report says the victim told police a man put a gun to her head, covered her head with a towel and forced her into a stairwell. The man said, “I don’t want to hurt you. I just want to have sex with you,” according to the report. A grand jury indicted Evans on charges of kidnapping while armed, first-degree sexual abuse while armed and assault with a dangerous weapon. Evans is to be arraigned on the charges feb. 27. Police declined to discuss what evidence led to the arrest. D.C. Superior Court documents show police in 2018 ob- tained a search warrant to collect DNA from Evans while investigating the sexual assault of a woman on oct. 13, 2013. That incident occurred about 9:30 a.m. in the 400 block of New Jersey Avenue NW, between Union Station and the Capitol. A police report says the victim was threatened at knifepoint and then sexually assaulted. [email protected]

The DIsTrICT

Man charged in assault

is suspected in another

grandparents. I even have a
picture of them with the
neighbors.
I was there for all those
photos. But I’m not in most of
them for reasons that other
moms can probably relate to: I
was either taking them or trying
to stay out of them.
If you look at photographs of
babies and toddlers taken in the
19th century, you will notice that
some of those children are
propped against strangely
shaped, cloth-covered lumps.
Those lumps are actually their
mothers.
The long exposure times that
cameras required meant
photographers had to get
creative and mothers had to get
lost — sort of. They became
props and backdrops. mothers,
and motherly stand-ins such as
nannies, were tasked with both
keeping the children still and
staying out of sight.
Those images eventually
became know as “hidden
mother” photos, and they are
fascinating and unsettling. In
some, the women resemble
ghostlike figures looming behind
babies. In others, their faces
appear painted over or scratched
out.
“These photographs range
from the comic, almost slapstick,
barring of the mother to more
macabre examples of her literal
erasure,” i s how the Palmer
museum of Art at Penn State
described them when it held an
exhibition on those photographs
several years back. “Never meant
to be seen, her presence
nonetheless haunts these
images.”
A lot has changed since
draping sheets over moms
seemed normal. And yet, too
often moms still don’t appear in
many photos of their children.
The proof can be found on
parenting sites, in personal
essays and at playdates.
once at an outdoor birthday
party, my younger son climbed
into my lap to recharge for a few
minutes before darting off again.
As he rested his sweaty head
against me, another mom raised
her phone to take a photograph.
Before I could tell her not to
bother, which is what I tended to
do even before I had kids, she
said, “No one ever takes pictures
of moms.”
That’s true. mom moments
have a way of blending into the
background in a way that

vargas from b1

moments with other family members don’t. Grandma reads a book to the baby and we know instantly we want to preserve that image forever. We read to that child every night for years and it doesn’t occur to us to capture it even once. Sure, plenty of moms take selfies with their children. I have plenty of those. But those images aren’t what children will later scrutinize for clues about their childhood. for that, they will turn to candid photos, those images snapped in unplanned moments when you don’t have time to even brush that hair out of your face. Those are the photos that are both tempting to avoid and yet are the important ones because they go beyond how moms look and capture how they live, how they mother.

The hard part is trying not to duck out of them. Trust me, I get it. So many of those moments when we are mothering our best we don’t look our best. our hair is unruly. our faces are bare. our bodies are braless. In some of the photos and videos my husband has taken of our children and me, I am holding up a hand to wave the camera away. I never thought much about those moments until I had to sift through thousands of our images, looking for that family photo to send to my son’s class. only then did it hit me that even though I’m a main character in my kids’ lives, I appear as a guest star in our photos. In that way, I am not so different from those “hidden mothers” who were both present

and absent. I don’t know if I will have decades or years or less to form memories with my children, but based on the photos that exist now, they wouldn’t fathom a fraction of the ways I try to show them how much they matter to me. They wouldn’t see me standing in my bathrobe at 7 a.m. mixing pancake batter with food coloring to make a red T-rex for one of them and a blue shark for the other because those are their favorite creatures. They wouldn’t see me wearing a cheap superhero mask chasing pretend supervillains alongside them. They wouldn’t see the bags I get under my eyes every time they get sick because even when they sleep, I’m still up worrying. While going through our pictures, I made a quiet promise to myself. I would stop waving away cameras no matter how I felt I looked, I would try to be more like that mom at the birthday party who had already figured out what it would take me a few years to learn, and I would make more of an effort to get at least one quality family picture a year. The first and only time we took professional family photos, we were living overseas and I couldn’t resist the natural backdrop and affordable photographer fees. I treasure those images. I also knew there was no way I could send one of them to my son’s class. In them, he is 1. Then I remembered one other family photo. It was taken at one of those photo-booth-like setups at my niece’s wedding in Te xas. In it, my older son wears a gray suit and a matching cowboy hat, and my younger son, who was the ring bearer, sports a black tux. He was 3 at the time, and I wondered if it was too dated for him to take to his class. But then I saw him look at it — at us — and light up. He asked me to send it. I printed it, framed it and tucked it in his backpack. I also emailed his teacher to apologize for the delay and explain why a simple task had taken me so long. She replied with an assurance that she knew how hard it could be to find a good “or any” f amily photo. of course, she understood. She’s also a mom. [email protected]

Theresa Vargas

For moms, reframing our mind-set on family photos

gift of susan herzig and Paul hertzmann, Paul m. hertzmann, inc., san francisco, Palmer museum of art

as seen in the tintype “veiled Mother with Child,” moms in the 19th century were tasked with keeping kids still during long exposures — and staying out of sight. They were painted over in some cases.

the U.S. People in Prince William
are desperate for real transit.”
The Senate finance and House
Appropriations committees did
not appropriate $2 million specif-
ically to a study. Instead, both
added language to the budget
directing the Virginia Depart-
ment of rail and Public Transpor-
tation to spend that amount to
analyze a Blue Line extension, as
well as “other multimodal op-
tions,” s uch as Bus rapid Transit,
for the I-95 and route 1 corridors.
Even if the study recommend-
ed extending the Blue Line,
Surovell and other transit advo-
cates say, they would not expect
any construction for at least 10 to
15 years. However, supporters
were encouraged because money
for the state study would mark
the furthest the idea has come.
“The study included in the Sen-
ate Budget Amendment has been
a long time coming,” Sen. Jeremy
S. mcPike (D-Prince William)
said in a statement. “We finally
have provisions to create a frame-
work for transportation projects
down the line. Ty pically, metro
expansions like this will take de-
cades but we shouldn’t be dis-
heartened. This study is the first
step on our pathway to a modern
mass transit future.”
However, there also is the ques-
tion of whether the metro system,

blue line from b1

which is nearing completion of its Silver Line extension, could han- dle more capacity. Phase 2 of the Silver Line will extend metro to Dulles International Airport and into Loudoun County. metro officials have said the system cannot be expanded until they first increase capacity at crowded stations in the core and in tunnels that become choke- points — an effort expected to take years and cost billions. for example, metro has said the Blue Line cannot accommo- date more trains without a sec- ond tunnel at rosslyn, a well- known bottleneck in the system where Blue, orange and Silver

line trains back up to travel be- neath the Potomac river. Any capacity expansion, metro officials have said, would come after the agency addresses a back- log of unfunded work to make the system safer and more reliable. “metro remains focused on ad- dressing the safety and reliability needs of a now- 44 -year-old system,” metro spokesman Dan Stes- sel said in an email. “It’s truly gratifying to hear support for expanding public transit — and hopefully that can happen some- day — but metro and the region will first need to address physical capacity constraints, particularly in the downtown core, before any jurisdictionally funded exten- sions beyond a 129-mile system.” Jason Stanford, executive director of the Northern Virginia Transportation Alliance, said the transit study would jibe with the state’s recent efforts to help expand Virginia railway Express commuter rail and Amtrak ser- vice. But he questioned the tim- ing of studying a metro extension before transit agency officials have determined how and when they will expand the system’s core, and how the region will pay for it. “You have to focus on the core capacity issues first,” Stanford said. “otherwise, this will probably be a study that will sit on a shelf waiting until these other things happen.” The push for more transit

comes as some Prince William leaders have advocated for the Washington redskins to build a new stadium in the I-95 corridor, which now has relatively little mass transit. Local officials say they also want to attract major employers, many of them seeking sites near transit, so fewer resi- dents need to leave the county for work. In addition to shrinking commutes, they say, transit stations would spark office construction and other commercial development that would add to the tax base. Surovell said the state should explore a Blue Line extension even as metro addresses its capacity constraints so a project could be ready to compete for federal transit construction money. It also would provide the counties time to allow for denser development in the corridor, which would increase future transit ridership. “one of these lines typically takes 10 to 20 years” to plan and build, Surovell said. “If we wait until metro solves its core capacity problems, we won’t get a new line until 20 years after that.” Prince William Board of Super- visors Chair Ann B. Wheeler (D-At Large) said she, too, be- lieves the state must begin studying what she called a potential “game-changer” f or the county. “We want to be a destination and bring people in,” Wheeler said. “If it takes 15 years [to extend the Blue Line] and we start today, then we could have it in 15 years. But if we don’t start today, we’ll never get it.” A study would begin after July 1 and is expected to take about 18 months. Supervisor margaret A. franklin (D-Woodbridge) said Wood- bridge’s roads weren’t designed for the population that has swelled over the past few decades. The area also needs the economic development that metro stations bring, she said. “Extending the metro into Woodbridge will create economic opportunities that Prince Wil- liam County has never seen,” franklin said. [email protected]

Va. directive would permit Blue Line extension study

astrid riecken for the Washington Post Passengers at King street Metro stop. virginia lawmakers have included language in the state budget for a $2 million study of how Metro’s blue line could be extended into Prince William County.

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The Washington Post - 20.02.2020

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