On January 26, Osman Abdullahi was gunned down by D.C. Police after an altercation inside his unlicensed group home. The home, located at 830 7th Street NE, had no heat, very little food, and no supervision. Abdullahi wasn't taking his medication at the time. The home's manager Mark Spence has a long history with troubled group homes. We published a cover story on Spence's activities and Abdullahi this week.

Within a few days of the incident, Spence effectively shutdown his group home. The lights were turned off. The doors were locked. A mysterious notice to "correct" or "vacate" was placed on the door.

The Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs told me they have no record of posting such a notice on the door of 830 7th Street NE. The notice cited overcrowding as an issue. Spence had 30 days to correct the overcrowding problem or face some kind of fine or eviction. I saw the notice. The notice did not have DCRA letterhead or a name and phone number of an inspector who made the determination.

I asked Spence about the note. He told me the building's owner could have posted it. He added that he had cleared everyone out of the building. This is a clear violation of landlord-tenant regs. No one stopped Mr. Spence from ignoring the law.

The Office of the D.C. Long-Term Care Ombudsman Program has had frequent encounters with Spence’s work, dating to 1999, according to Jerry Kasunic, the office’s current director.

Today, Kasunic met with the Department of Mental Health. He had one question for the department: Where did the residents of 830 7th Street NE go?

The department's answer: We don't know.

Kasunic sounded frustrated on the phone. "I don't know where they went," he says. "I want to make sure they have support services that they need whether its medical, psychiatric, any kind of coaching and counseling."

Kasunic had just gotten back from his meeting with DMH officials. He says he hopes to have information on the residents within a week or two.

"The longer the people are without the proper support systems the better the chance that someone is going to relapse and end up in an ER room or a psych unit," Kasunic says. "They need the proper case management."

If Spence was a licensed provider, the residents of 830 7th Street would have been given a 21-day notice of eviction, counseling before the 21-day notice, and a proper transfer to another facility or group home.

Instead, the residents were just dumped. “No one is stepping up to the plate to find these people,” Kasunic says.

In early November, D.C. police entered David Kerstetter's Logan Circle home and shot and killed him. Police say Mr. Kerstetter had a knife, that there was a struggle. The crime scene shows no evidence of a struggle. On January 26, Osman Abdullahi was shot and killed by D.C. police after they entered his unlicensed group home at 830 7th Street NE. He had a knife. He used a metal pole as a weapon. He allegedly tried to attack the police. Witnesses say he urged the police to kill him. Abdullahi is the subject of this week's cover story.

What did Kerstetter and Abdullahi have in common? They were both residents in crisis. Both suffered from mental illness. Both had stopped taking their meds.

The police knew Kerstetter. The police did not know Abdullahi.

The New York Police Department recently adopted a new policy. Any time a known mentally-ill person is the subject of a 911 dispatch, the officers rushing to the scene are notified. In a limited way, DMH did know about Abdullahi. In early December, he had called its helpline and requested services. The other men he was living with in that group house–most of them had been in the system at some point in their lives. Not to mention that the house was operated by Mark Spence; DMH knew him very, very well.

How to respond to the mentally ill has been an issue that the D.C. Police Department has refused to address. For years, they have fielded complaints from residents, from the Office of Police Compliants, and done very close to nothing. I wonder how many more times is the department going to put the lives of its officers at risk? How many more residents in crisis are going to have to die before the department starts to seriously look at its policies? And when is the D.C. Council going to hold hearings on the issue?

I had called Chief Lanier about these issues repeatedly in the wake of Kerstetter's death. I e-mailed her directly twice. I called her office. I called her people. She never called me back. Not once. She never felt it necessary to address the circumstances of Kerstetter's death–she had immediately declared the cops involved as probably justified–nor how her department handles residents in crisis. I have seen Lanier tend to grieving families with a grace and skill few officials can match. I find it difficult to imagine that Lanier hasn't thought about this issue in a serious way.

I did call Assistant Chief Peter Newsham, who runs the Internal Affairs Bureau. I asked him about policy changes and the NYPD's new warning system.

"It would be very helpful to know what the officers are walking into," Newsham said. "We are definitely going to take a look at that...That's something we'll definitely look at."

But what will the D.C. Police do about it?

*Undated photo of Abdullahi was provided by his family.

The incident happened shortly before 11 a.m. While there was some back and forth over whether the home was a group home, it is a rooming house that does include people who are mentally ill. One former resident I interviewed said that he had been referred to the house by a psych facility. "This is supposed to be a community residential facility," said the former resident of his one-time 7th Street home.

Tonight, the home was empty except for two residents. The former resident was on the scene as well. He talked about the man who had been shot and killed by police. He knew him as "Osmond." Police released his name a few hours ago. His name is Osman A. Abdullahi. He was 36. The former resident said that Osman could be delusional, that he talked often about people out to get him. Some of Osman's enemies were from Alaska. "I would say he was schizophrenic," said the resident. "He talked about people coming to get him."

A month ago, he says, he saw Osman laying on his bed. "He had a butcher knife under [the] covers," he recalled. "He was worried about his roommates. He said the roommates were talking in their sleep about him."

This morning, Osman, attacked one of his roommates, a senior citizen, someone the two current residents referred to only as "Lewis." Grant Osborne, 57, a resident at the 7th Street home, says he woke up this morning to Osman standing in the doorway with a knife. He was fuming about his same old problem: People were out to get him. They were coming for him. Osborne didn't understand. The shades were drawn.

Osborne remembers the police breaking down the door. He heard the police ask Osman multiple times to drop his weapon. He says he heard one shot.

Osborne is speaking from his stoop. He is dressed in sweat pants, a sweat shirt and jacket. He is wearing a knitcap. It is 6:15 p.m. Soon two members of the Department of Mental Health's mobile crisis unit show up at the stoop. They offer to talk to Osborne and another resident. They want to talk inside where it is supposedly warm.

When they open the door to 730 8th Street, it is immediately apparent that inside will not work. There is blood in the foyer. It has pooled and congealed in spots. In one area, there is a small squiggle of bloody flesh.

Blood splatter or blood smears are on the lower right corner of the wall. Mobile Crisis calls it in. They want to see about getting this cleaned up. "There's still blood on the floor," one tells the authorities. "Nobody's here except for the people that live here."

"There is blood in the hallway," she tells the police during a second call. "This is a biohazard." It is 6:45 p.m. Police say they are done with the crime scene. It isn't their job to clean up the blood. A police cruiser soon passes by. And then another.

The carpet is drenched with blood and fluids. It's not quite a carpet. It looks like the foam layer that comes with the carpet. The foam is duct taped to the floor and stairs. In the kitchen, the sink is stopped up. The garbage disposal switch does nothing. Also, Osborne says one of the bathrooms is "messed up."

The former resident says he had to move because his bedroom had a mold problem. The former resident eventually leaves. He says he is headed for a niece's house in Maryland. He carries with him a loaded down garbage bag. If anyone needs him, he says, he will be at a local psych facility in the morning.

It is freezing inside 830 7th Street. Osborne says sometimes the heat comes on. Sometimes it's just cold. Upstairs there is a blood stain in the hall.

There is no one there to supervise the men. There is no one there to make sure the heat works, to clean up all the blood on the floor. Mobile Crisis makes a call to the proprietor–Mark Spence of an organization called "Hope Finders." Mobile Crisis has to leave a message.The men say they haven't seen him in a while.

I later reach Spence. He says that he has yet to visit his property since the shooting death of Osmond. "I wasn't down there," he says. "I know all about it. I really don't have any comment."

Osborne says he has been living at 830 7th Street for no more than a year. When he first arrived, he says, "everything was brand new." He doesn't know how many group homes or rooming houses he's lived in. There was one in Baltimore. There was a stay at the Psychiatric Institute of Washington. Now, there is uncertainty.

The two employees from Mobile Crisis do not think it is a good idea for Osborne to stay at 830 7th Street. They bring up the blood.

Osborne is prepared to leave, he says. He agrees to get in their van and find other shelter options. He tells one of the employees that he left all of his clothes and belongings in his first-floor room. But that he doesn't care. The employee assures him that he can get more clothes. All he carries with him to the van is a small, half-filled plastic bag. His nose is running. His sweat pants have seen better days. But his tan work boots look new. Osborne takes a seat in the far back corner of the van.

Osborne just stares out the window and takes in the car's heat.

There is one resident left at 830 7th Street NE. He tells mobile crisis that he doesn't want to go with them in their van. There is not much else mobile crisis can do. The resident quietly closes the door, walks back across the blood, and on inside.