In the late hours of a September night in Washington, D.C., gunfire erupted in the 2500 block of Elvans Road SE, a street that had become all too familiar with violence. When the chaos subsided, two men were struck by bullets. One man, 50-year-old Thomas Stalling of District Heights, Maryland, was pronounced dead at the scene on September 26, 2015. The other, a 45-year-old man from Northwest D.C. named Kenneth Evans, was rushed to a local hospital, critically injured. A third individual was also wounded in the attack.
For weeks, Mr. Evans clung to life, his condition a testament to the brutal exchange that had taken place. Despite the efforts of medical staff, his injuries proved to be too severe. On a Monday in early November, more than a month after the shooting, Kenneth Evans succumbed to his wounds, becoming the second fatality of the late-night ambush.
His death added to a grim statistic for that particular area of the city.
The investigation into the triple shooting and the resulting homicides was handled by the D.C. police. However, in the immediate aftermath and in the weeks that followed, no arrests were made in connection with the killings of Kenneth Evans and Thomas Stalling. The search for those responsible continued, leaving a community to mourn and grapple with the violence that had claimed two more lives. As of the time of the initial reports, the police had not publicly identified any suspects or a motive in the shooting.
