On a warm summer evening in Washington, D.C., six-year-old Nyiah Courtney was riding her scooter near her family. Remembered as a bubbly and bright child who loved to dance and wanted to be a firefighter, the little girl was looking forward to starting the first grade. Nyiah, a Black female, was with her parents and others in the Congress Heights neighborhood on July 16, 2021, when their night was shattered. Around 11 p.m., a car drove by the intersection of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.
Avenues SE and a person inside opened fire.
In the barrage of bullets, Nyiah was fatally wounded. Five adults, including her mother and father, were also shot but sustained non-life-threatening injuries. Police officers who were nearby heard the gunshots and rushed the child to a hospital in their patrol car, but she was pronounced dead. The killing of a child sparked outrage and sorrow throughout the city, where a makeshift memorial of balloons and flowers quickly grew at the site of the shooting.
Investigators announced that the shooting was not a random act of violence. They believed Nyiah’s father, Nico Griffin, was the intended target. Just two days before the shooting, Griffin had been indicted on federal drug and firearms charges as part of a long-running investigation into a local drug crew. Police offered a $60,000 reward for information and began searching for a silver or gray four-door sedan seen on surveillance footage.
Less than two weeks later, on July 28, 2021, authorities announced an arrest. Marktwan Hargraves, a 22-year-old from Waldorf, Maryland, was taken into custody by U.S. Marshals and charged with first-degree murder while armed. Investigators had linked Hargraves to the crime through cell phone data and witness statements. Court documents revealed text messages in which Hargraves allegedly expressed remorse after learning a six-year-old had been killed in the shooting.
Hargraves was ordered held in jail without bond as his case proceeded. In December 2021, a D.C. Superior Court judge found there was substantial probability to move the case forward. However, before a trial could take place, Marktwan Hargraves died while in custody. His death was announced by the D.C. Department of Corrections in July 2023.
