Do you know who murdered Dwaine Edward Bethea? In the early hours of March 9, 2005, the quiet around 13th and V Streets SE in Washington, D.C., was broken by the sound of gunfire. When officers arrived just after 1:45 a.m., they found 37-year-old Dwaine Edward Bethea, an African-American / Black man known by the nickname “Woo,” lying in the street, fatally wounded. He had been shot multiple times, and despite the rapid response, there was nothing first responders could do; he was pronounced dead at the scene, his life ending where the
bullets had struck him.
The corner of 13th and V Streets SE became an active crime scene as the darkness gave way to flashing emergency lights. Residents in the surrounding blocks, awakened and startled by the gunfire, watched as detectives and crime scene technicians worked through the night, marking shell casings, photographing the area, and trying to reconstruct the final moments before Bethea fell. The Metropolitan Police Department's Violent Crimes Branch took over the investigation, interviewing anyone who might have seen or heard something in those crucial minutes, hoping that some small detail would point them toward whoever had opened fire on him.
As days turned into years, the case remained stubbornly unresolved. Official notices from the Metropolitan Police Department appealed to the public for help, emphasizing that Bethea had been found shot to death at that southeast D.C. intersection and that his killing was still under active investigation. Authorities offered a reward of up to $25,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible, listing contact numbers for detectives and the department's command center in the hope that someone, somewhere, might finally come forward.
Despite those efforts, no clear trail has emerged. Public cold-case listings describe how Bethea was discovered with multiple gunshot wounds and note that, even with a prompt police response, no suspects have been identified or arrested in connection with his death. Over time, his name has been carried forward by online homicide and cold-case registries, which preserve the core facts of what happened on that March morning and keep his case in view, asking again and again the unanswered question: who killed Dwaine “Woo” Bethea, and why has no one yet been held to account?
