The Washington Post - 05.09.2019

B4 EZ SU THE WASHINGTON POST.THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 5 , 2019

he had no knowledge of the Bethesda cases, said he would also want to know why the balcony glass fell after shattering. “A properly designed railing, even if the grass breaks, shouldn’t fall,” Dotzler said. The owners of all three buildings declined interviews but re- leased statements. Carr, the owner of the office building at 4500 East-West Hwy., said it expects to replace the problematic glass over the next year. Marc Dubick, president of Duball, provided a detailed memo sent to Cheval residents about the broken balcony railing. The developer is replacing all of the building’s glass railings “out of an abundance of caution,” the memo said. Milton Schwarz, president of the Cheval condominium board, said he’s pleased with the company’s response. “These things happen,” Schwarz said. Greenbelt-based Bozzuto, which manages the Flats 8300 apartments, said that in light of the shattered glass canopy discovered Tuesday, it is extending the building’s protective scaffolding “as an added precaution” — some- thing Mansouri said the county is also considering as an order. “We have been working closely with building engineers and ma- terials scientists to diagnose the issue and investigate further,” Bozzuto said in a statement. The firm also has been in touch with the family of the injured 12-year-old girl, according to the statement. “Our company was founded on the values of care and concern,” Bozzuto said. “A s the property manager, the safety of our residents and everyone who visits the community is our highest priori- ty.” [email protected]

Laboratory, tests products used in building facades, said prob- lems due to nickel sulfide were more common in the 1960s. How- ever, he said, he’s found them “terribly infrequently” since the 1970s, when U.S. glass manufacturers found ways to ensure nickel sulfide wasn’t left behind. But Dotzler said he’s s een more cases in the past five to six years, all in glass manufactured by Chi- nese firms, often at a lower price. “It really doesn’t happen with European or North American or even South American [glass] manufacturers,” Dotzler said. Dotzler, who emphasized that

without warning, according to experts. A consultant for Duball Fair- mont, the Reston-based developer of the Cheval condo building, also found nickel sulfide as the likely cause of the balcony railing’s July 7 break, according to a developer’s memo sent to building residents. One glass expert said finding out which company or companies manufactured the problematic glass will be key, particularly if nickel sulfide is found as the root cause in all three buildings. George Dotzler, whose Miami company, Construction Research

5310 14 th St. NW. On Friday, city officials used a search warrant to inspect that house, discovering a “junky and unkempt” single-family resi- de nce that had been divided into nine rooms, with nonwork- ing smoke detectors and a sliced power cord, according to a report. The owner of that property, Chidi Anyanwutaku, confirmed to The Washington Post that he charged rent but disputed some of the inspectors’ findings. [email protected] [email protected]

officials — at the fire department or the DCRA — were aware of the police officer’s warning. Dean, the fire chief, said his agency is reconstructing how the complaint was handled and determining why no fire code inspection was performed at Kennedy Street NW. Dean said fire officials tried to visit a second property flagged in the police officer’s report but gave up when they determined that he had provided an invalid address. The officer mistakenly wrote the address as 5410 14th St. NW. The correct address is

with locks which would make it difficult to exit in an emergen- cy.” The officer said he would “strongly recommend” that inspectors visit the property. Por- tions of his report were written in bold for emphasis. When no action was taken, the police officer followed up with multiple emails. Eventual- ly, an investigator from the DCRA went to the house to determine whether it was being used in an unlicensed manner but closed the case when he could not gain entry. It is unclear how many other

system insufficient for the num- ber of people living in the house. The owner of the house, James G. Walker, has not re- sponded to interview requests. City officials are conducting multiple internal reviews of how the case was handled. Four District employees have been placed on administrative leave — two at the fire department and two at DCRA. The consumer and regulatory affairs agency is also reviewing nearly 70 cases closed since December — some involving the same investigator who respond- ed to the report about the Kennedy Street house — to determine whether those cases should be reopened. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) ordered the new protocols. She also commissioned an inde- pendent study to determine what went wrong and called for a criminal investigation into the fire. “It is clear that our agencies should have done more to better protect our residents,” City Ad- ministrator Rashad M. Yo ung said last week. The deadly fire has focused attention on the dangerously cramped living conditions en- dured by some District residents desperate for affordable housing in an increasingly expensive city — and on the effectiveness of the bureaucracy tasked with ensuring that those conditions do not become fatal. A police officer who visited 708 Kennedy St. NW on an unrelated call in March emailed fire and DCRA officials to warn of potential fire code violations in what appeared to be an unlicensed rooming house. An incident report the officer sent described “make shift doors

FIRE FROM B1

building owners. In the Baltimore case, the building owner, Baltimore-based Beatty Development Group, found probable manufacturing impurities in multiple glass panels, according to media accounts. A spokesman for the company was unavailable this week. A consultant for Carr found the same flaw — the presence of nickel sulfide — in glass that fell from the facade at 4500 East- West Hwy. When the glass pro- duction process is contaminated, tiny balls of nickel sulfide can form in the glass and, over time, cause the glass to crack or break

national news coverage finds them to be relatively rare. Howev- er, the Bethesda incidents are similar to a case in Baltimore, where two people were injured in October after glass fell from a broken eighth-floor window in the 20-story Exelon Building downtown, according to news media reports. The Bethesda cases have alarmed residents in an inner suburb undergoing a boom in high-rise construction, including several buildings with glass facades. “What are the odds that you’d have three buildings in one downtown area that all have issues?” said Bethesda resident Amanda Farber, who has been tracking the problem. “I’d like to know what the common denominator is. They’ve all happened under different weather conditions and at different times of the year. Is it a defect with the glass itself ?” Paige Coulman, another Bethesda resident, said she saw the pellets of glass rain down Aug. 22 on a group of about four adults and four children outside the Flats 8300 apartment building. Coulman, who was driving by, said she saw the group cover their heads and run across the street. On Tuesday morning, Coulman said, she was startled to see the shattered glass canopy at another entrance to the same building. “I thought, what’s going on?” Coulman said. “It’s scary.” In all of the incidents, Man- souri said, the glass fell in small pellets rather than in larger, more dangerous shards because the glass was tempered, as required by the international building code. All three buildings now have scaffolding and overhead cano- pies protecting sidewalks below, some ordered by the county and some installed voluntarily by the

entrance of a Harris Te eter gro-
cery store suffered minor injuries
when glass the size of pebbles fell
from the balcony railing of a
ninth-floor apartment. Most re-
cently, a glass canopy at the same
building, the Flats 8300 apart-
ments at 8300 Wisconsin Ave.,
was discovered shattered Tues-
day above the front entrance,
along the same sidewalk as a
school bus stop. Although the
glass shattered, it did not fall.
On July 7, part of a glass railing
fell from an eighth-floor balcony
of the 17-story Cheval Bethesda
luxury condominiums at 4 960
Fairmont Ave., at the corner of
Old Georgetown Road.
Reports of falling glass first
surfaced in spring 2017 at an
office building at 4500 East-West
Hwy. Three panels of the glass
facade subsequently shattered
and fell to the sidewalk, while
eight other panels broke but did
not fall. In May, the building
owner, D.C.-based Carr Proper-
ties, agreed as part of a county
inquiry to replace the type of glass
panels found to have manufactur-
ing defects.
It’s unclear whether the glass
was all made by the same compa-
ny b ecause the owners of all three
buildings declined to provide the
name of their glass manufactur-
ers to The Washington Post.
“We need to get more answers,”
said Hadi Mansouri, acting chief
of Montgomery’s Department of
Permitting Services. “Why all of a
sudden it’s happening is some-
thing we’re trying to figure out.

... It’s a life and safety issue.”
Mansouri said the county
hasn’t determined who manufac-
tured the glass.
Officials in Washington, Prince
George’s County and Northern
Virginia said they couldn’t recall
any similar glass failures in re-
cent years, and a search of inter-

GLASS FROM B1

BY DANA HEDGPETH

Two juveniles and a man were
shot Wednesday morning in
Northeast Washington amid a
rash of violence overnight in the
District, according to D.C. police.
The shooting happened about
8:40 a.m. in the 5300 block of Dix
Street near Division Avenue NE,
which is blocks from H.D. Wood-
son High School.
The school was placed on lock-
down shortly after the shooting, a
school official said. Exterior
doors were locked, and no one
was allowed to enter the building.
Police spokesman Dustin
Sternbeck said the juveniles and
adult were taken to a hospital.
They had injuries not considered
to be life-threatening, police said.
Police Chief Peter Newsham
said authorities got a call for a
report of a shooting at Marvin
Gaye Park, where police arrived
to find the three victims. New-
sham said the two juveniles were
students but didn’t say what
school they attend, although he
added they didn’t attend Wood-
son.
Police said they are looking for
a person believed to be a male in
his teens wearing tan pants and a
black top. He said he didn’t know
if the person was a student.
“Whenever we have young peo-
ple that are shot in the city, it’s a
very, v ery serious concern to all of
us,” Newsham said.
He said authorities will look
into why the juveniles weren’t in
school at the time. Newsham said
police didn’t know of a motive for
the shooting.
The incident followed other
overnight violence in the city.
One man was fatally shot and

another was injured in a shooting at 10:49 p.m. Tuesday in the 900 block of Division Avenue NE — about a half mile from the morning shooting. The two men were shot while sitting in a vehicle and drove themselves to a hospital in Prince George’s County, Newsham said. He said it doesn’t appear the two shootings are related. The man who died was identi- fied by police as 28-year-old Kalin Louis Middleton, of Seat Pleas- ant. Authorities said the other man was in stable condition with injuries not considered life- threatening. In another incident, a 16-year- old boy was shot at 9:41 p.m. Tuesday in the 4300 block of E Street in Southeast near Te xas Avenue, close to the Benning Te r- race housing complex. The victim said he was at a bus stop when a man came up and shot him in the chest and leg before he fled. D.C. police said they didn’t know of the teenager’s condition. In another incident, a man was stabbed around 1 a.m. in the 3200 block of 23rd Street SE near the Woodberry Village apartments. The victim told police that he was getting items from his truck when someone approached and asked for a cigarette. The victim said he didn’t have any, a nd the attacker stabbed him in the stomach before fleeing. The only description police have is that the man was wearing a Kobe Bryant jersey. The victim’s injuries aren’t considered life-threatening, police said. [email protected]

Pe rry Stein and Justin Wm. Moyer contributed to this report.

THE DISTRICT

3 shot near high school

after night of violence

O∞cials look for possible links between mysterious Bethesda glass incidents

Fa tal fire brings change in D.C. inspection protocol

AMANDA FARBER A glass panel at the entrance to a Bethesda apartment building was found shattered Tuesday. Another panel broke last month and fell from a ninth-story balcony on the building, injuring a 12-year-old girl.

MARVIN JOSEPH/THE WASHINGTON POST Children who knew Yafet Solomon, 9 , who died Aug. 18 in a house fire in Northwest Washington, release balloons in tribute to their friend outside the building where the blaze took his life.

BY KEITH L. ALEXANDER

A D.C. Superior Court judge
Wednesday said prosecutors have
enough evidence to convince a jury
to convict a 29-year-old man of
first-degree murder in the shoot-
ing death of 11-year-old Karon
Brown in July.
Prosecutors said the defendant,
To ny McClam, had been involved
in a confrontation with Karon that
evening outside a McDonald’s in
Southeast Washington. They said
Karon got into a car to flee and
McClam fired in anger, sending a
shot through the back of the vehi-
cle and killing the boy.
McClam’s defense attorney con-
tended that McClam was fearing
death when he fired because he
thought the car’s d river was threat-

ening him. Following a nearly six-hour hearing, Judge Craig Iscoe rejected the defense claim and ordered that McClam be jailed pending trial. “Self-defense is simply not pre- sent in this case,” I scoe said. “His actions were intended to kill someone in that car.” Wednesday’s proceeding was the first full hearing following the July 18 shooting that sparked out- rage in the city. While a detective testified that McClam, another adult and two children had been involved in a dispute with Karon, neither the detective nor the law- yers on the case said what it was about. Karon was shot just before 7 p.m. after running from a physi- cal fight with one of those children,

who was with McClam, Detective Anthony Greene of the D.C. police testified. McClam, according to Greene’s testimony, never touched Karon during that altercation in front of the McDonald’s, near a gas station at Naylor Road SE and Alabama Avenue SE. Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Liebman showed a video of a silver Nissan Sentra pulling into the gas station and Karon jumping inside. Greene testified that the driver and passenger saw Karon being beaten and stopped to see if he needed help. Greene testified that as the sedan pulled off, McClam and the group began to walk away. But then the car — with Karon in the back seat — made a U-turn and

drove back to the gas station. The driver, authorities said they recently learned, returned to the gas station because he realized he had forgotten to stop and buy ciga- rettes, which is why he had been headed there in the first place, Greene said. When the sedan returned to the gas station, the men inside the car recognized McClam and his group and tried to speed off, Greene said. He said it was then that McClam began shooting. McClam’s public defender James King argued that his client did not know Karon was in the back seat. King said at least one witness told authorities that the driver had leaned down in his seat as if he were reaching for a weapon. Greene testified that there were

no weapons found in the vehicle after the shooting and the only shell casings at the scene came from McClam’s g un. Liebman said that, based on where McClam was standing when the Nissan initially pulled up, he had to have seen Karon climb into the car’s b ack seat. He a lso said that the Nissan was driving away from McClam when he began shooting, which in his estimation indicated that McClam was not in any dan- ger. “It made no sense for the defendant to shoot at the car, unless he saw that the little boy with whom must minutes earlier he had a tus- sle with, was inside it,” Liebman said. Greene said Karon and McClam were also involved in an “altercation” t hree days earlier. Details of that prior altercation were not re- vealed. Police arrested McClam two days after Karon’s shooting.

Authorities said McClam told police that he had purchased the 9mm handgun for protection after the fatal shooting of his brother, which happened in 2015. But Liebman argued that if Mc- Clam were fearful, he would have purchased the gun four years ago. Instead, McClam purchased the gun in May, j ust two months before Karon was shot, authorities said. A witness, Greene testified, told police that McClam often carried that gun in a fanny pack around his hip. Karon’s mother, Kathren Brown, began to cry as the pros- ecutor showed a photo of the Nis- san’s gray-interior back seat, cov- ered in blood. After the hearing, still wiping tears outside the court- room, Brown said she was glad McClam was held in jail. “I just want this to be over,” s he said. “I am just ready for all of this to be over.” kei [email protected]

Judge orders suspect in shooting of 11-year-old held

The Washington Post - 05.09.2019

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