Demeitri Anderson, a 23-year-old Black/African American man from Northeast Washington, DC, was spending a late Sunday morning at the BENCO shopping plaza along the 4500 block of Benning Road Southeast on November 29, 2020, when his life was cut short. Shortly after 12:30 p.m., the quiet of the day was broken by the sound of gunfire that would leave him lying on the sidewalk in front of Ken's Beauty Supply, steps away from a busy roadway and storefronts where people came and went as usual just
moments before. Members of the Metropolitan Police Department's Sixth District, who were already in the area, heard the shots and moved toward the scene, where they found Anderson suffering from multiple gunshot wounds and showing no signs of life.
In the minutes before the shooting, prosecutors later recounted that a man named Antoine Turner had driven a rented red Nissan Versa to the nearby 4500 block of B Street Southeast, parked, and then walked a looping path through the neighborhood. He went from B Street to 46th Street, turned onto East Capitol Street, and then slipped into the rear alley behind the BENCO shopping plaza, effectively circling in on his target. At about 12:38 p.m., Turner emerged at the front of the plaza, walked up behind Anderson as he stood outside Ken's Beauty Supply, and opened fire at point-blank range, shooting him repeatedly in the back of the head and body in broad daylight.
Across the street, a uniformed officer in a marked cruiser saw and heard the attack unfold. As the officer pulled toward the gunman, Turner ran toward B Street with an orange hood pulled over his head and a gun in his hand, cutting directly in front of the patrol car. The officer watched as the fleeing man threw the handgun into the street before jumping into the waiting red Nissan and speeding away. Back at the plaza, emergency personnel confirmed that Anderson had died where he fell, and his body was later taken to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. In the days and months that followed, digital candles and tributes appeared on online memorial pages, where loved ones shared his name, his age, and even the nickname “3 Heavy,” a small detail that hinted at a fuller life behind the brief lines of the police summaries.
The investigation quickly connected Anderson's killing to another fatal shooting earlier that month on the 4500 block of Dix Street Northeast, where 34-year-old Demetrius Benson had been gunned down on November 3, 2020. Detectives from the Homicide Branch pieced together evidence tying both cases to the same suspect. On December 3, 2020, officers arrested 27-year-old Antoine Turner of Northeast DC and charged him with two counts of first-degree murder while armed in connection with the deaths of Benson and Anderson, as well as felon in possession of a firearm after finding him with a handgun at the time of his arrest. Police later noted that Turner already had a serious prior arrest history, including violent and weapons-related offenses, underscoring the sense that Anderson's killing was not an isolated eruption of violence but part of a troubling pattern.
As the case moved through the courts, hearings were delayed while defense lawyers reviewed extensive evidence, pushing any trial further into the future. Years after the shooting, in September 2025, Turner stood before a DC Superior Court judge and chose to admit his role in the daylight killing. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder while armed for Anderson's death, as part of a deal in which prosecutors agreed to drop other related weapons charges and to resolve his exposure on multiple cases within a set sentencing range. The plea agreement called for 20 to 26 years in prison, followed by supervised release, and left the final number within that range to the judge at sentencing. Reports from the courtroom described Anderson's loved ones objecting to the length of the deal, wishing instead for the maximum possible punishment, a reaction that spoke to the depth of the loss they had carried since that November afternoon outside the shopping plaza.
