FRIDAY, MAY 27 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE B5
ties, but found the victim injured
in the bathroom.
In making their argument that
Alston should stay in the adult
system, prosecutors told Boynton
that, if convicted, he would not
have to go to a regular prison with
older inmates. Rather, they said,
he could go to a program at the
Patuxent Institution that accepts
offenders younger than 21. The
program typically take six to seven
years to complete, according to
testimony.
Felsen countered that there
would be no guarantee that Alston
would be selected for the program
and could end up in a standard
prison. The average age of inmates
in the Maryland prison system, a
spokesman said this week, is 39.tried to take it,” he said.
Felsen, the defense attorney, ar-
gued that fighting over the gun led
to it going off. Prosecutors con-
tended that Alston was able to pull
it back and then fire.
It was difficult to hear DeAn-
dre’s exact explanation because of
the volume level of the recording
played in court.
School surveillance video
showed Alston leaving the bath-
room a short time after he went
inside. A school security officer,
alerted to commotion in the area,
could be seen walking toward the
bathroom and passing Alston who
by then, prosecutors allege, had
concealed his gun.
The security officer did not hear
a gunshot, according to authori-interview between investigators
and DeAndre, the victim. He told
them that during the months be-
fore the shooting, he and Alston
began “talking trash to each oth-
er,” which led to a series of fist-
fights. “Just punching each other,”
DeAndre said.
On Jan. 21, DeAndre said, the
two had agreed to meet in the
bathroom for what DeAndre
thought was going to be another
fistfight. Alston walked in.
“Then what happened?” a de-
tective asked, according to the re-
cording.
“I got shot,” DeAndre said.
Asked to provide more details,
the teenager said Alston said noth-
ing and pointed the gun, and the
two wrestled over the weapon. “Igun,” bringing it to school and
shooting DeAndre Thomas, 15, in
the pelvis. The victim spent 52
days in the hospital and has un-
dergone nine operations, with an-
other one scheduled, according to
hearing testimony.
“It was only through the result
of a very complex medical inter-
vention that saved his life,” Boyn-
ton said.
The judge’s decision followed
an all-day hearing Monday that
revealed new details about the
Jan. 21 shooting: how Alston alleg-
edly wandered the halls for 14
minutes before ducking into a
classroom — all while armed with
a concealed gun and a loaded mag-
azine — as the school went into
lockdown. Detectives determined
him to be the alleged shooter in
large part when an assistant prin-
cipal working with them noted a
social media post on her phone. It
stated: “Steven shot 'Dre.” He was
arrested about two hours after the
shooting when a SWAT team burst
into the classroom he’d ducked
into. Alston’s movements and the
arrest were captured on surveil-
lance video and police body-cam-
era video, which were played in
court.
“Hands up! Hands up!” the tac-
tical officers shouted, before mov-
ing in on Alston and quickly
knocking him to the ground.
Other students in the class be-
gan to cry.
“I didn’t do anything!” Alston
yelled.
In seeking the transfer to the
juvenile system, Alston’s attorney,
David Felsen, argued that his cli-
ent had never been in trouble be-
fore, had been threatened by De-
Andre and his friends, and had
thought the gun would protect
him. Once in the bathroom, Felsen
said, there was a fight over the gun
and it accidentally went off.
Felsen acknowledged that in
bringing the gun to school, “clear-
ly, a young man made a horrible
choice,” but stressed that Alston
was eager for the kind of treat-
ment and rehabilitation programs
geared toward teenagers in the
state’s juvenile system.
“This is a young man who has a
chance at doing the right things,
and receiving the right services, so
that the court makes sure there is
no recidivism in this case,” he said.
But prosecutors had presented
the attack as more planned — con-
sistent with them recently secur-
ing an enhanced charged against
Alston of first-degree, premeditat-
ed attempted murder. The move,
they said, reflected the victim’s
recent statement to investigators,
which had been delayed because
of his medical condition. In that
statement, according to the pros-
ecutors, DeAndre said that Alston
pointed a gun at him and that he
grabbed at it, but that Alston
pulled it back to gain control.
“It was at that point in time that
that young man raised the gun and
fired it,” Assistant State’s Attorney
Donna Fenton said during the ear-
lier hearing.
The midday shooting at
Magruder, a school of 1,600 stu-
dents in the heart of one of the
state’s top-performing school dis-
tricts, shocked residents of Mont-
gomery County. As the school
went into lockdown, terrified par-
ents rushed over to learn if their
kids were safe.
In the earlier hearing, an audio
recording was played of the recent
MAGRUDER FROM B1
Bringing gun was ‘horrible choice,’ attorney says
BILL O'LEARY/THE WASHINGTON POST
Buses are brought in for students after a SWAT team responds
t o the Jan. 21 shooting at Magruder High School in Maryland.Key said. “I also have a few seniors
near me that don’t come out. So I
do come up and get maybe three
or four meals at a time for them.”
A few hours after Bucher
pulled out, as the lunch hour
approached and children’s voices
could be heard from recess at the
elementary school next to the
community center, a middle-aged
woman pulled into the parking
lot.
Quickly stepping to the fridge,
she filled her arms with eight
bottles of formula.
“For my daughter’s baby,” said
Beverly, who declined to give her
full name for privacy reasons.
“My grandbaby.”
The child was 2 weeks old. “My
daughter has been trying to
breastfeed but she’s having trou-
ble with the baby latching,” she
said. “So we have been using
formula, too.”
The family has given up on
trying to find formula at stores,
she said. Instead, they mostly
check online, but the prices had
been high or the product sold out.
The eight eight-ounce bottles she
had would last three days, she
thought.
“It’s a peace of mind,” she said
before leaving. “I thank the Lord.”
By early afternoon, there
would be only one formula bottle
again left in the Glassmanor
fridge.from American University. Buch-
er said he asked them to look
around at home for stray formula
on store shelves, especially if they
lived in parts of Florida with a
preponderance of senior citizens.
“That gives me about a hun-
dred-person network around the
country,” he said. “We’re scouring
in places with older people like
Pinellas, Dade and Broward
countries in Florida. We get pal-
lets every day in from around the
country.”
That effort, combined with lo-
cal formula drives and donations,
Bucher said, means Feed the
Fridge has 100,000 bottles of for-
mula to be spread across the
region. The formula giveaway,
however, isn’t going to stop when
the shortage inevitably ends.
Over the past 2^1 / 2 years, while
Bucher has been thinking about
Feed the Fridge, he considered
hungry families and hungry sen-
iors, but never hungry babies, he
said. Formula was a blind spot.
“So we’re going to try to find
the funding to put formula in the
fridges every day,” he said.
Jacoline Key, a longtime Glass-
manor resident and president of
the community association, said
the fridge has been of benefit to
the community spectrum. “I have
a young girl that lives in my
neighborhood, and she just had a
baby. I took her some formula,”he could use to get the coveted
product to disadvantaged fami-
lies.
He had found a unique way to
source the formula two weeks
before at a reunion of his Phi
Sigma Kappa fraternity brothers“One hundred meals and we pay
the restaurants $6.”
When the baby formula short-
age went into overdrive in the
past few weeks, Bucher realized
Feed the Fridge’s locations offered
an already existing infrastructurefilled each day. Like the others,
the Glassmanor location in Oxon
Hill was chosen because it sits in a
food desert, he said, five miles
from the closet supermarket.
“This one is filled with $600
worth of meals each day,” he said.facturers have made assurances.
The White House has taken ac-
tion. But families everywhere are
still facing the frightening possi-
bility of not being able to feed
their kids. It’s a crisis that has
particularly affected those strug-
gling below the poverty line.
“The dirty little secret is a lot of
this stuff, the ready-to-drink bot-
tles, you can’t buy on SNAP ben-
efits,” Bucher said. “People have
been trying to get those [in pow-
er] to just make it SNAP-eligible.
But they can’t move that quickly.”
But speed and entrepreneurial
can-do is what Bucher has been
trying to throw at pressing social
concerns since the coronavirus
pandemic hit.
A co-owner of the D.C.-based
Medium Rare restaurant group,
Bucher in summer 2020 set up
Feed the Fridge, a network of
refrigerators stocked daily with
fresh meals put together by area
restaurants. By January 2022, the
nonprofit organization had
served more than 500,000 meals
while being fully funded through
donations. “There’s no qualifica-
tions. No data collection. Just
food,” Bucher said.
The Glassmanor fridge Bucher
was stocking with formula had
opened a few weeks earlier, one of
14 Feed the Fridge locations being
FORMULA FROM B1
D.C.-area charity adds baby formula to daily food o≠erings
CRAIG HUDSON FOR THE WASHINGTON POST
Mark Bucher prepares to stock one of Feed the Fridge’s s ites in Oxon Hill, Md., with baby formula.
Bucher sources some of his supply from lower-demand places such as elderly-leaning areas of Florida.22-0302
The Magazine
The road to the Capitol attack: A writer
discovers her small Virginia town’s underside of
conspiracy, guns and anti-government sentiment.Business
NFT reckoning: Collectors have shelled out
small fortunes in recent months for digital
assets. Now, with the crypto market in flux and
the hype for NFTs cooling, many are having to
reappraise the worth of what they own.Travel
Cycling Girona: Offering a variety of climbs
and picturesque routes for every level of
fitness, Girona, a city in Spain’s northeastern
Catalonia region, has become a hot destination
for recreational cyclists.Sunday CouponsSave nearly $1 00 with coupons in this
Sunday’s Post!Some stories may not run due to breaking news.Arts & StyleSummerreadingWhat books
deserve a spot
in your beach
bag? Critics,
authors and
librarians offersuggestions.
FLOORINGSALEFREE INSTALLATION ON ALL
CARPET HARDWOOD LAMINATE VINYLFREE INSTALLATION ON ALL
Mention Promo Code “WAPO”To Save An Additional$
100CALL TODAY!855-997-0772SaleAppliesToAlICarpet,Hardwood, Laminate,andVinyl.
OfferGoodThroughMay31,2022.W
EC
OMETO
YO
U
!FREEIN-HOME
ESTIMATESCARPET HARDWOOD LAMINATE VINYLFLOORINGSALE