The Washington Post - USA (2021-10-23)

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 23 , 2021. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ M2 B3

THE DISTRICT

Woman found fatally shot in Southeast

A 44-year-old woman was found fatally shot early Thursday in the Fairlawn neighborhood of Southeast Washington, according to D.C. police. The victim was identified as Sharon Robinson, who police said had no fixed address. A police officer patrolling the area found the woman about 1:22 p.m. in the 2200 block of Nicholson Street SE, near the Anacostia Freeway and Pennsylvania Avenue. Police said Robinson had been shot, and she was pronounced dead at the scene. Authorities did not release any other information. — Peter Hermann

MARYLAND

Child killed in crash in Silver Spring

A 3-year-old child riding in the back seat of an Acura sedan was killed in a three-vehicle crash Thursday night in Montgomery County, police officials said. Shortly after 10 p.m. , the 2005 Acura RSX was traveling south on Georgia Avenue, approaching Dexter Avenue in Silver Spring, police said. Also heading south nearby was a 2021 Honda Civic. Just ahead of them, from the northbound lanes, the driver of a 2020 Ford Fusion tried to make a left turn onto Dexter, police said. It was struck by both the Honda and the Acura, with the Acura then striking a large decorative brick wall, according to authorities. Three people were inside the Acura. The driver and a passenger were hospitalized with serious but non-life- threatening injuries, police said. The child was pronounced dead at a h ospital. The drivers of the Honda and Ford su stained non-life- threatening injuries, police said. Officials said the child’s name will be released following notification of family. — Dan Morse

LOCAL DIGEST

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agency enacted lower fares and
more frequent service in hopes of
luring them back.
Federal investigators indicat-
ed during a Monday briefing the
agency knew of wheel assembly
problems with Metro’s 7000-se-
ries cars since 2017 but did not
remove them from service or
report it to the independent
Washington Metrorail Safety
Commission. Wiedefeld said Fri-
day the wheels were under war-
ranty and being replaced over a
span of years. But until this year,
only isolated cases were discov-
ered among the thousands of
inspections Metro carries out an-
nually.
He acknowledged that when
problems ticked up dramatically
this year, more should have been
done. NTSB Chair Jennifer Ho-
mendy said Monday that Metro
identified two failures each in
2017 and 2018, four in 2019 and
five in 2020. Before the derail-
ment, the agency had found 18
failures this year, and inspections
last week turned up 21 more.
“That is definitely where that
should have been raised much
sooner,” he said.
Metro officials said they look-
ing at the process for how to
return the 7000-series cars to
service. The question of how to
get the cars safely back in service
was being tackled separately
from the issue of determining the
root cause of the defects, Wie-
defeld said, holding out the
promise of a shorter disruption
to Metro service.
He said components of the
plan include determining how
often rail cars will need to be
inspected, then conducting tests

METRO FROM B1 to ensure the new inspection
regimen is effective.
David Mayer, chief executive of
the Washington Metrorail Safety
Commission, an independent
government agency that oversees
Metrorail safety, endorsed that
approach Friday. He said deter-
mining the root cause might take
time, describing the issue with
the cars as a “progressive defect”
that gets worse over time.
“The main thing I think needs
to be focused on in the short run
when we’re talking about return-
ing cars to service is making sure
we all have a very good scientific
technical grasp on the rate of
progression of the defect so that
we can set a safe inspection
interval and prevent future de-
railments,” Mayer said in an in-
terview Friday.
He said Metro could use data
from inspections it has carried
out in recent days and measure-
ments taken during tests of trains
to determine a s afe interval. The
commission this week ordered
Metro to create a plan to detect
and assess the wheel assembly
problem, as well as come up with
a process that can safely return
the cars to service.
“Metro is working, we know, to
create a plan as we required in
our order, and we would expect to
find elements like that in a plan,”
he said.
The 7000 series is Metro’s new-
est, largest and most advanced
train set, with greater ability to
operate trains with eight cars
instead of six. Transit officials
said an agreement with the NTSB
restricts them from speaking
about the investigation.
Manufacturer Kawasaki Rail
Car, which has joined the NTSB
investigation, hasn’t responded

to multiple requests for comment this week. NTSB investigators are trying to determine why wheels on nearly two dozen cars shifted, putting trains at greater risk for derailments and other incidents. An investigation team that in- cludes Metro officials and the safety commission has disassem- bled and inspected wheel sets at a Metro maintenance facility this week. No one was injured in the Oct. 12 derailment, which prompted the evacuation of 187 passengers outside the Arlington Cemetery station, but it led the safety commission to pull all 748 of Metro’s 7000-series cars out of commission Sunday night. The suspension has forced the transit agency to run the rail system using 40 train sets, operating trains at 15- to 20-minute intervals on the Red Line and 30 to 40 minutes on other lines. Wiedefeld said he recognized problems in recent days could hurt the public’s confidence in the system, but said he believed trust could be recovered. “We’re not hiding anything,” he said. “We want to be as transpar- ent as possible.” Paul Smedberg, the board chairman, who appeared along- side Wiedefeld in a virtual briefing Friday, said the board contin- ued to have confidence in Metro’s leadership. “We’re behind the entire team,” he said. Smedberg acknowledged the board had concerns about not being informed of wheel assembly issues sooner, but said he was reserving judgment on whether the board should have been briefed. D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser

(D) said in a statement that Metro this week “failed to exe- cute upon safety in a way that meets our expectations and that has impacted reliability and ca- pacity.” She said the city needs a fully functioning transit system for workers, children and visi- tors. Democratic U.S. Sens. Ben Car- din and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland and Mark R. Warner and Tim Kaine of Virginia wrote Wiedefeld on Thursday night calling on him to share more information about the transit agency’s recovery plans and safety efforts. “We will be eager to hear from you in a timely manner on your plans to address the specific safety concerns associated with last week ’s derailment, to restore public confidence in your organization, and to embed safety more effectively into your organiza- tional culture — a repeated focus of our discussions with you since you took the helm of [Metro] six years ago,” they wrote. Hours after Wiedefeld’s com- ments on the transit agency’s recovery, Metro found itself evac- uating passengers from a dis- abled train in another headache for passengers. About 100 riders were removed after the 3000-series train broke down about 100 feet from the Gallery Place station’s platform, said Metro spokeswoman Sherri Ly. Rail service on the Green and Yellow lines between Mount Ver- non Square and L’Enfant Plaza was briefly suspended, but no one was injured. Metro is operating with 268 rail cars, or about 22 percent of its roughly 1,200-car fleet. Nearly 250 are from its 2000 and 3000

series lines that entered service as far back as 1982. Other cars are in storage or undergoing repairs, and Metro mechanics and techni- cians are working to get them back into service. The transit agency’s stock in- cludes 22 rail cars from Metro’s 6000 series, up from 16 earlier this week. The cars had been pulled from service in November after two train separations on the Red Line last year. Metro said cars are being phased in after an inspection process. Between 10 and 15 percent of available rail cars are typically out of service on any given day for maintenance or repairs. Business leaders have urged a quick resolution to Metro’s service woes, saying lengthy service problems are more likely to push riders to find alternatives. “How long will this last? That’s a big concern,” said JB Holston, chief executive of the Greater Washington Partnership, which consists of chief executives of many of the region’s largest companies. In an interview Thursday, he pointed to the disruption Metro’s service levels have caused even as much of the region is working from home and ridership is about one-third of normal levels. He said it is important for Metro to be as clear as possible with riders about what to expect as the agency recovers. “Suddenly we’re back where we don’t want to be,” Holston said. “Anything and everything that everyone can be doing to get this resolved is in the direct interest of our economy.” [email protected] [email protected] [email protected]

Limited Metro service to continue until Oct. 31

School, where he played soccer and basketball and ran track, according to his attorney, Steve Mercer. “He was an outgoing, well- liked, normal person who was re- spectful of women and had a g irl- friend and who was a popular young man,” Mercer said in court. Williams went off to college in Florida, returning to the area to help take care of his father after he’d suffered a stroke, Mercer said. He married in 2014, the attorney said, to a woman who still supports him, and they have two young daughters. Other family members remain close to him as well. “Of course they see the side of David that is beyond this case itself,” Mercer said. “They know that David is more than this case, and which is why it’s so hard to reconcile who they know of David with this case. And so it’s a strug- gle, your honor. It really is. But they love him. They support him.” On the morning Williams and the woman came together at the bus stop, he said hello, and she said hello back and returned to her own business. “The defendant, out of no- where, attacked her,” Ferrell said. “He grabbed her. He threw her down the hill so she wasn’t visible to the street anymore, and he threatened to kill her.”

As she recovered physically, she said in her statement, a debilitat- ing fear remained constant: Be- cause the attacker took her ID and credit cards, he could learn who she was and attack again. “Whenever I go outside,” she wrote recently. “I only go with my husband and relatives.” Detectives arrested Williams in 2019, after connecting his DNA found at an unsolved attempted burglary scene to what was col- lected in the rape case. As part of his plea agreement with prosecutors, he maintains his right to ap- peal a previous court ruling

against his attorney’s efforts to exclude DNA findings from the case. Investigators were deeply af- fected by wh at happened to the woman, as were paramedics and nurses who treated her the day she was raped. “Those people did not have to look at their notes to remember this case,” Ferrell said. “ They were able to remember every detail of their interactions with the [victim] and what she looked like on that day, because this case was just that bad and it was just that brutal.” [email protected]

entire body to the public after
violating her in the worst way,”
prosecutors wrote in court filings.
Calling the crime “vicious and
heinous,” Judge Steven G. Salant
noted that there seemed to be no
explanation for it: “There’s no sug-
gestion that there was a m ental
health problem or an impairment
of judgment [or] that someone
was under the influence of a mind-
altering substance or some delu-
sional-producing substance. This
was an act that was carried out
deliberately.”
The victim, in her mid-20s at
the time of the rape, spent seven
days in the hospital, followed by
eight months of physical therapy.
She remembers only segments of
the attack. “That part also makes
me cry and scream at night,” she
wrote.
T he hearing this week, which
followed Williams’s guilty plea
earlier this month, included dis-
cussion of both his and the victim ’s
lives before and after the rape.
The woman and her husband

SENTENCE FROM B1 met as children in Nepal and im-
migrated to the United States in
2016 “in the search for the Ameri-
can Dream [having] actually won
a lo ttery to come here,” Assistant
State ’s Attorney Adrienne Ferrell
said in court.
The woman enrolled in college
to continue her education. She got
the early-morning job at Dunkin’
Donuts.
“As soon as she got here, she did
everything right,” Ferrell said.
“She did all of this to build a b etter
life for her and her family.”
Her husband also took a m orn-
ing-shift job at a Dunkin’ Donuts,
this one in the opposite direction
in a different part of the county. He
drove there, and would wave at his
wife if she was still at her bus stop.
On the morning of the attack,
when he didn’t see her, he as-
sumed she’d already boarded.
She was, in fact, out of view and
at the bottom of the embankment,
according to prosecutors.
Williams was born in D.C.,
where he lived before moving to
Kensington, Md., and attending
Bethesda-Chev y Chase High

Man sentenced to 45 years for

‘heinous’ attack at bus stop

Inbox inspirational wpost.com/news/inspired-life

S0331 1x1

unforg ettable,” he said, “and inspired deep commitment to pro- viding college resources from the audience and community.” In 2016, Rodriguez started the STEM Ready Program, an after- school program focused on im- proving achievement in math and science high school courses. And in 2019, she initiated the Univer- sity Partnership Program, through which select schools commit to recruiting, financially assisting and academically sup- porting D.C. public and public charter high school graduates. Rodriguez’s tenure of more than two decades leading the nonprofit is something that “almost never happens,” said Graham, who remains on the DC-CAP board. During that time, he said, she’s dealt with 11 school superin- tendents and four mayors, and managed to maintain strong rela- tionships with D.C.’s schools no matter who was in charge. “She’s been an important nonprofit leader in this town for a very long time,” Graham said. “She is a tireless advocate and fighter,” said Leonsis. In June, Rodriguez will pass the baton to a new leader who can help DC-CAP realize its next major goals: increasing the number of college scholarships for D.C. students and investing in virtual college counseling. DC-CAP’s board of directors is launching a national search for a successor who can commit for the next 10 years, Graham said. Rodriguez said she’ll leave the job proud, knowing her work has had a lasting impact in the Dis- trict. “Before, going to college was the exception,” she said. “But we sort of flipped the script.” [email protected]

every District public high school
and, since 2008, every public
cha rter high school to help stu-
dents get to college.
Under Rodriguez’s leadership,
and in partnership with the
schools, the program gradually
helped bring D.C. students’ col-
lege enrollment closer to 60 per-
cent — and the national average.
That turnaround wasn’t an
easy one. But Rodriguez, who was
born in Havana and immigrated
to the United States as a child, was
up for i t.
Rodriguez had majored in en-
gineering at Stanford and com-
pleted an MBA at Harvard, in
1984, before going into consulting
in Washington. Early in her ca-
reer, however, she realized there
were few people of color at the
companies where she worked
who were doing math or science.
Education had always been a
part of her story — Rodriguez’s
mother, she said, was the first
Black woman to receive a PhD in
mathematics and astrophysics at
the University of Havana — so
working in that field was, per-
haps, always inevitable for Rodri-
guez. “That was where I needed to
be,” she said. And so she left Booz
Allen Hamilton and started her
own independent firm in Wash-
ington, consulting for universities
and D.C. Public Schools to in-
crease STEM education among
students of color.
When Donald Graham, then
the publisher of The Washington

RODRIGUEZ FROM B1 Post, asked Rodriguez to launch
DC-CAP in 1999, she saw the chal-
lenge as an opportunity to inter-
vene early in a student’s life and
help students of color move into
higher education. With the sup-
port of a talented team and a
board of directors, then led by
Graham, she set out to build a
large-scale system in which every
D.C. student who aspired to go to
college had the opportunity.
The congressional legislation
lowered the financial barriers for
D.C. students, and DC-CAP set out
to foster an accompanying “col-
lege-going culture,” Rodriguez
said. But to create a sustainable
system embedded in the schools,
she said, people had to believe in
higher education and the power it
had to transform the lives of stu-
dents and their families.
“We had to get families and
guardians to understand that to
move the family generationally,
they had to support the education
and higher education of the kids,”
Rodriguez said.
Transforming the education
landscape in Washington also re-
quired the collaboration of every-
one involved in the chain of edu-
cation: parents, students, public
officials, counselors and private
donors. It particularly required
persuading those in the public
school system that working with
DC-CAP was a good deal.
“It took us time to build trust.
When they realized that we were
working together, then the num-
bers started to go up,” Rodriguez
said.

Rodriguez transformed

D.C. education landscape

According to DC-CAP figures, the organization has helped enroll more than 35,000 students in postsecondary education, supports more than 6,700 students in college, celebrates the success of 14,000 college graduates, and has awarded nearly $55 million in scholarships to D.C. students. Schelly Mitchell-McMillan, a DC-CAP college adviser at McKin- ley Technology High School, said she has seen high school students become lawyers and pharmacists because of the program, which she called Rodriguez’s “baby.” “We help foster each one of these [students] to make a better society and a better community for all of us,” Mitchell-McMillan said. Steven Adams II, an economics major at Morehouse College, credits the nonprofit as part of the reason he is attending the university today. At Woodrow Wilson High School, he joined the Alpha Leadership Program, a DC-CAP initiative Rodriguez launched in

2007 to assist and empower young men of color to graduate from high school — and to help them become socially and academically prepared to enroll in and graduate from college. DC-CAP helped him apply to more than 100 scholarships to pay for his tuition at Morehouse and found him his first internship, Adams said. Now the chief of staff for Morehouse’s student government association, he will be in- terning next summer for Gold- man Sachs, he said. DC-CAP was “there every step of the way, whenever we needed support,” Adams said. That support has been multi- faceted. In 2009, Rodriguez launched the DC-Capital Stars Competition, a competition to showcase D.C. students’ artistic talents at the Kennedy Center. “I personally was in awe,” recalled Ted Leonsis, CEO of Monumental Sports and Entertainment and the current head of DC-CAP’s board. The performances “were

BILL O'LEARY/THE WASHINGTON POST Argelia Rodriguez will step down in 2022 at DC-CAP, which says it has helped enroll more than 35,000 i n postsecondary education.

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