In the early evening of April 22, 2025, the sound of gunfire shattered the quiet of a Southeast Washington, D.C. neighborhood. When officers from the Metropolitan Police Department's Seventh District arrived at the 2900 block of Knox Place SE around 6:40 p.m., they found a young man suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. Despite the immediate response and lifesaving efforts by DC Fire and Emergency Medical Services, 22-year-old DarJuan McRoy, an African American male, was pronounced dead at
the scene. He was a resident of Southeast, D.C.
The initial investigation into the homicide was active and ongoing, with detectives from the Homicide Branch canvassing the area for clues and appealing to the public for information. The Metropolitan Police Department offered a substantial reward of up to $25,000 for any information that would lead to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for McRoy's death. For months, the case remained under investigation as authorities worked to piece together the events that led to the fatal shooting.
Several months later, on August 14, 2025, a breakthrough in the case came when members of the Capital Area Fugitive Task Force located and arrested a suspect. Tarik Settles, a 30-year-old man also from Southeast, D.C., was taken into custody. He was subsequently charged with first-degree murder while armed in connection with DarJuan McRoy's death.
Court documents later revealed that McRoy had been shot seven times by an unidentified shooter. The prosecution's case against Settles alleged that he had aided and abetted the shooter, driving him to and from the scene with prior knowledge of the impending violence. This assertion was based on security camera footage that captured Settles and the alleged shooter together before the incident, as well as footage of Settles apparently picking up the shooter in his vehicle after the shooting. However, during preliminary hearings in September, a DC Superior Court Judge found that the prosecution's evidence was insufficient to meet the probable cause standard, determining there was not enough proof that Settles shared the shooter's intent.
