A Washington, D.C., government employee turned himself in to the police there on Tuesday to face a second-degree murder charge in connection with the shooting death of a 13-year-old, Karon Blake, earlier this month, a police spokeswoman said.
The spokeswoman, Brianna Burch, said that details about the investigation and the charge against the city employee, Jason Lewis, would be announced at a news conference later on Tuesday.
Mr. Lewis’s lawyer, Lee Smith, said in an emailed statement that Mr. Lewis was “distraught” and “maintains his innocence.”
“While this is certainly a tragedy, once all the facts are heard, I believe that a jury will find that there was no crime here,” Mr. Smith said.
The Metropolitan Police Department said that, just before 4 a.m. on Jan. 7, a man emerged from a residence in the Brookland neighborhood of Northeast Washington when he heard noises and saw someone who appeared to be “tampering” with cars. After an “interaction,” the police said, the man fatally shot the teenager, later identified as Karon Blake.
Little was initially said about what happened during the encounter between the man and the middle school student. The case stirred concerns about armed citizens taking matters into their own hands, and days after the shooting, many questioned why the man had not been publicly identified or arrested.
On Jan. 10, Chief Robert J. Contee III of the Metropolitan Police Department said at a news conference that the case represented the “tragic death of a son of our city,” but emphasized that the department could not release details about what happened until an investigation was completed.
