Social Services Had Prior Contact With Triple Homicide Victims
Mafara Hobson, Mayor Adrian Fenty's spokesperson, confirms that the victims in yesterday's triple homicide in Northeast had contact with social services. A statement is being prepared which could take some more time. The victims–Erika Peters and two of her children–were stabbed and found by D.C. Police yesterday afternoon inside their Carver Terrace Apartments.
Last night, Joseph Randolph Mays–Peters' live-in boyfriend–was arrested for the murders.
City Desk will update when we get the statement from the Mayor's office.
Update 6:18 p.m. Attorney General Peter Nickles released this statement:
"After receiving a hotline tip [in] 2006, the Department of Child and Family Services took appropriate steps to resolve issues. In 2007, after the necessary measures were taken, the case was closed, with no subsequent reports."
10:24 am
If "appropriate steps" were allegedly taken to resolve issues this family was having, then why are there 3 dead bodies?
Wasn't this the same m.o. of the Child and Family Services agency with Banita Jacks? Employees then had determined necessary measures were taken and deemed the case closed...and the end result was 4 dead bodies.
And just think about the cases of domestic violence, child abuse and neglect that the Child and Family Services agency lets slip thru the cracks that doesn't get any news coverage.
Even with all this turmoil, the Fenty administration has not made a concentrated effort to improve the Child and Family Services agency; there was not a serious search for a new agency director...one director quit, and her deputy was basically given the position.
Councilmember Tommy Wells, chair of the Committee on Human Services, (the committee that has oversight of the Child & Family Services agency and a former social worker himself) has put forth no energy demanding a serious cleanup of the Child and Family Services agency. Instead Councilmember Wells is more concerned with charging poor people 5 cents for plastic grocery bags and playing cool guy by riding his bicycle up and down Pennsylvania Avenue.
11:57 pm
I just think people failed to help this family because they were too engrossed in themselves. Selfish people don't care about noone but themselves. They can see you starving and not feed you. It's sad. I think there were people in position who could have intervened and maybe this tragedy would have never occurred.