In the evening hours of a Memorial Day weekend in Washington, D.C., a dispute that began over a child riding his bicycle in a parking lot escalated into a tragedy that claimed the lives of 40-year-old Jaquon Helm and his wife, 35-year-old Venius Badgett. On May 26, 2018, the couple was in the parking lot of the Gardens Apartments on Galveston Street SW when they encountered a young boy on his bike. Fearing for the child's safety in the dark, Badgett advised him not to ride there at night.
This seemingly simple caution set off a devastating chain of events.
The boy relayed the interaction to his mother, who then engaged in a physical altercation with Badgett. Helm intervened to break up the fight, and as he and his wife were walking away, the boy called his father, Alonzo Lewis, to the scene. Lewis arrived and, in front of several children who were outside playing, opened fire on the couple. Helm, a contractor and youth football coach, was pronounced dead at the scene from multiple gunshot wounds to his head and chest. Badgett, a school bus attendant, was rushed to a nearby hospital where she succumbed to her injuries. The couple left behind five children, some of whom witnessed the horrific events of that night.
In the days following the shooting, the Metropolitan Police Department identified 33-year-old Alonzo Lewis as the suspect and sought the public's help in locating him. He was described as a Black male, and police warned he should be considered armed and dangerous. On May 31, 2018, just days after the incident, authorities arrested Lewis and charged him with first-degree murder while armed.
The investigation proceeded, with a key piece of evidence coming from an 11-year-old eyewitness who identified Lewis as the shooter. Despite his defense attorney's arguments against the reliability of a child's testimony, a judge found probable cause to move forward with the case. Ultimately, in October 2023, Alonzo Lewis pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree murder while armed. In November 2023, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the killings of Jaquon Helm and Venius Badgett, bringing a measure of closure to a case that began with a neighborhood dispute and ended in a senseless double murder.
