In the spring of 2020, on the afternoon of Tuesday, May 19th, the bustling business district of Anacostia in Southeast Washington, D.C. was shattered by the sound of gunshots. When police arrived at the 2400 block of Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE, just a block from the Anacostia Metro Station, they discovered a grim scene. Three people had been shot.
Twenty-year-old Jaszel Henderson and 31-year-old Terrance Griffin, both of Southeast, DC, were found with fatal injuries and were pronounced dead at the scene. A third victim, an adult female, was rushed to a local hospital with life-threatening injuries.
The investigation into the brazen daytime shooting quickly got underway. Detectives from the Metropolitan Police Department's Homicide Branch began to piece together the events of that tragic afternoon. Witnesses reported seeing a gold-colored Saturn SUV leaving the area shortly after the shots were fired. The motive for the shooting was not immediately clear to investigators, who worked to unravel the circumstances that led to the deaths of the two young men.
Less than a month later, on June 17, 2020, an arrest was made in connection with the murders of Jaszel Henderson and Terrance Griffin. A 16-year-old male, Michael Mason of Southeast DC, was taken into custody. He was charged as an adult with first-degree murder while armed, in addition to other serious charges related to a string of violent crimes that occurred between April and May of that year. Mason was also a suspect in two other homicides. The Metropolitan Police Department had offered a substantial reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction in this and other homicide cases in the District of Columbia.
