Black Kills 8 Year Old White Boy in Knife Attack

8/12/2019 Black Kills 8 Year Old White Boy in Knife Attack

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Source: THE WASHINGTON TIMES 4/20/00

Black Kills 8-year-old White Boy in

Knife AttackBy Ellen Sorokin and John Drake

A knife-wielding man yesterday attacked an 8-year-old in Alexandria, Va., killing the boyand injuring his great-grandmother and a passer-by who tried to stop the random,unprovoked attack, police said.

Its a tragic afternoon here in Alexandria,said Lt. John Crawford, a city police

spokesman. I have never heard ofanything like this in my entire career.

Kevin Shifflett, 8, had been playing withseveral neighborhood children outside hisgreat-grandparents house in the 100 blockof East Custis Avenue about 3:40 p.m.when a man walking down the streetsuddenly attacked him with a knife for noapparent reason, Lt. Crawford said.

Kevins 80-year-old great-grandmother ran out of the house to protect him, but theman punched her in the chest and cut her on the right arm. She was treated at

Alexandria Hospital and released last night.

The 51-year-old passer-by who tried to help the boy also was stabbed. The passer-bywas in serious condition last night after undergoing surgery at Washington HospitalCenter.

Police did not identify either woman because they are witnesses to a crime.

After attacking the boy, who is white, the man fled east toward Mount Vernon Avenue.Police issued a lookout for the man last night, calling him armed and dangerous.

They described him as black, 20 to 25 years old, 5 feet 9 inches tall and with a mediumbuild. He was wearing a light brown sweater, dark blue T-shirt and dark pants.

Police last night did not know of any motive for what they called an apparently randomattack, nor whether the boy and his assailant were acquainted, or why the man singled


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out Kevin from the other children, Lt. Crawford said. Police were interviewing neighborsand bystanders to see whether anyone recognized him, he added.

Kevin was a second-grader at Mount Vernon Elementary School and was visiting hisgreat-grandparents.

Kevin was a happy, kind little boy who was very quiet and respectful in school, said

Roberta Trout, whose son, Timmy, is Kevins cousin. Mrs. Trout, 38, is a substituteteacher at Kevins school.

Kevins parents, who work for the city government, dropped off Kevin and his twosiblings at the house yesterday morning before going to work.

Timmy Trout, 6, had been playing with Kevin and several other children until a half-hour before the slaying, when his grandfather, Ralph Trout, called him home to helpplant a tree.

That could have been my child, that could have been my child, said Mrs. Trout, wholives a half block from where the attack occurred.

I dont know what Im going to do with my boy now, she said. Mr. Trout said he ranover to the grandparents house when he heard police cars driving down the street.

The grandmother showed me her arm and didnt say anything, Mr. Trout said. Shewas just in shock. Several hours after the attack, yellow police tape still marked off the

area as police continued their investigation. Police worked well into the night collectingevidence from the blood-splattered driveway where Kevin was slain.

Officers, some with police dogs, went door to door yesterday afternoon, searching forthe suspect and any evidence.

Neighbors stood behind the police tape aghast at the dried blood on a gray ChevroletCavalier parked in the driveway next to where the children had been playing.

Its just really, really sad, said neighbor Chris Combs, who saw Kevin and his friendsplaying outside an hour before the attack occurred. Nothing like this has everhappened here before. I grew up here, and we all played here. Its a wonderfulneighborhood. This is just unbelievable.

The great-grandparents house is not far from Del Ray United Methodist Church and apreschool. C. Potter,, a teacher at the preschool a block from the killing, said she lockedthe church doors after she went out to check if the playground was wet and saw policecars. This is a big trauma for this neighborhood, Ms. Potter, 36, said.

Alexandria Vice Mayor William Euille, a Democrat, was among those neighbors standingin the street, watching the scene in disbelief. This is very sad and very tragic, said Mr.


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Euille, who lives four blocks away. This is not natural to have this happen in ourcommunity. Im stunned, said Bill Miller, whose 9-year-old daughter attended schoolwith the boy. Kevin was a great little kid. How could you even imagine what couldprovoke an adult to slash a child? It could have been my child on my street.

Mr. Miller said he will now think twice about allowing his daughter to play outsideunattended. Im always cautious, he said. But I dont know now. Things havechanged a little bit since this happened. Jacqueline Richardson, tightly holding agranddaughter who attends the preschool, said she was just shocked this happened.

I cant believe someonedid that to a small child, Mrs. Richardson said.

Racial Note Found in Suspects Hotel

RoomBy Josh White and Patricia Davis| Washington Post Staff WritersFriday, July 7, 2000; Page A01

A handwritten note saying Kill them raceess whiate kidds anyway was leftbehind in the hotel room rented by a suspect in the slaying of Kevin Shiffletttwo days before the 8-year-old boy was fatally stabbed in Alexandria, hoteland law enforcement officials said.

The note, written on the back of a Virginia Department of Corrections memo, isbelieved to have been penned by the 29-year-old suspect and may prove to be keyevidence linking him to the killing, a law enforcement source said.

The note may provide evidence of the suspects state of mind before the slaying,sources said, and give investigators a possible motive.

A witness to the April 19 attack told police that the killer, who was yelling as he headedtoward Kevin, said something to the third-grader about hating white people beforeslashing his throat, a source said. The suspect is African American, and Kevin waswhite.

Police have never publicly stated any racial overtones in Kevins death, and a sourcecautioned that the witnesss statement requiresmore investigation.

Still, a law enforcement source characterized the note as a very promising newdevelopment. The note came to light during a Washington Post interview with hotelofficials. The Post obtained a copy of the note and showed it to authorities, who thenobtained the original from the hotel.


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Detectives homed in on the man June 23 when investigators matched evidence takenfrom a cab, used by Kevins killer to flee the crime scene, to DNA on file in a databaseof Virginia felons. Although police have linked the man to the getaway vehicle, they arestill looking for evidence linking him to the crime scene.

The felon had lived with his family five blocks from the scene of the slaying and wasparoled from prison on a malicious wounding charge 12 days before Kevin was killed,sources said.

The Post is not naming the man because he has not been charged in Kevins killing and

because authorities have never publicly identified him as a suspect.

The suspect was convicted of malicious wounding stemming from a 1993 attack inAlexandria that also had racial overtones. The victim in that case, Leonard Riddle, saidthe suspecta strangercalled him whitey before brutally beating him with a hammerfor no reason.

The note was found in the hotel where the suspect stayed in the days before Kevinsstabbing. Four days before the slaying, on April 15, the suspect checked into theHomewood Suites Hotel on Leesburg Pike in Fairfax County, just outside Alexandria,paying $350 in cash for two nights in a luxury first-floor suite with a Jacuzzi.

Early on April 17, the man left a burning cigarette on his bedsheets as he took ashower, igniting a fire and setting off the hotels sprinkler system and alarm, a hotelofficial said. The hotel was evacuated, and firefighters burst through the door of theburning room.

The man refused to get out of the shower when firefighters arrived, spewing expletivesas smoke billowed from Room 117. The man was arrested by Fairfax police on cocainepossession charges and also for refusing to evacuate, police said.

His belongings were put under lock and key in the hotels lost and found room. Policesay they seized cocaine and marijuana from the room but left behind a few pieces ofclothing, some small personal items and a few pieces of paper.

Hotel staff kept the mans records on file, including a copy of his Virginia stateidentification card, issued April 13.After the stabbing, a hotel official became concerned

that the man who had stayed at the Homewood Suites might be the killer, noting atleast a slight resemblance to the police composite sketch. He checked the hotelsrecords, found that the man had lived in Del Raythe neighborhood where Kevin waskilledand thought the coincidences were important.

Iimmediately started thinking about the possible connections, the hotel official said.When I looked up his address and saw he lived in Del Ray, I thought that it was all too


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much. I struggled with it over the weekend, and early the next weekthe week afterthe murderI called the police.

A detective told him that a member of the task force investigating the slaying would callhim back, he said. That call never came, he said. I figured that they had ruled this guy

outthat he wasnt the right guy, the hotel official said.

On June 25after the man became a suspectpolice arrived at the hotel looking for acopy of the mans hotel bill. Hotel staff provided it, and the police left. Detectivesreturned early last week to pick up the rest of the mans belongings, according to hotelstaff. A hotel employee later found a piece of paper in the lost and found room thatapparently had fallen from the mans box of belongings and gave it to the hotel officialon Wednesday. That paper was the handwritten note with the racial overtones and areference to killing kids.

When I saw what was on it, I got very concerned, the official said. I called the police

right away. Police did not immediately return his calls, he said.

The suspects note is scrawled on a yellowed, stained and wrinkled sheet of papertheback of a Feb. 4 memo about copying fees to inmates at Virginias Greensville

Correctional Center, where he was imprisoned. It is written in broken English, somewords are strung together with little obvious meaning, and words are misspelled.

Yesterday afternoon, after the hotel official showed the note to a Post reporter, thenewspaper showed a copy of it to authorities and asked them about it. Police detectivesthen went to the hotel and seized the original of the note. A police spokeswoman said

they were already in the process of responding to the hotels concern at the time thatThe Post was questioning officials about the note.

The parolee had been held in the Alexandria jail since June 25 on a parole violation andwas moved this week to the Fairfax County jail to face the drug charges from the hotelarrest.

He is accused of violating his parole by not telling his probation officer of the hotelarrest, said James L. Jenkins, chairman of the Virginia parole board. He faces twohearings today. In one, prosecutors are seeking to revoke his bail on the drug charge.The other is a preliminary parole revocation hearing. The man was imprisoned a month

before parole was abolished in Virginia.

If his parole is revoked, he would have to serve the rest of his sentence on themalicious wounding and other charges, including sodomy. That amounts to almost twoyears and four months, Jenkins said. That would give police a large window to gathermore evidence in the Shifflett case.


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Some potential evidence was gathered at a Red Roof Inn in the Alexandria section ofFairfax County. The man stayed at the Route 1 motel the night of the killing.

Officials for Accor Economy Lodging, which owns the Red Roof chain, said the suspectchecked into the hotel April 19 and stayed through April 21, paying entirely in cash.

Emmett Gossen, a spokesman for the company, said there was absolutely nothingexceptional about his stay.

Gossen said Alexandria police showed up at the Red Roof Inn a few weeks ago andasked to look at records of the suspects stay. Police then rented the same room and

basically took it apart, removing carpeting, bedding and pieces of plumbing from the

hotel room, Gossen said.

The problem was that the room had been rented several times in between his stay andtheir search, Gossen said.

There was nothing that we or they could do about that. The only trace we have is hisname and reservation in our computers.

Staff writer Tom Jackman contributed to this report.

2000 The Washington Post Company

Source: CNSNews.com, July 25, 2000

Three Months Later: Killing of WhiteBoy Still Draws Yawns From JusticeDept.

By Lora Bright, CNS Correspondent

(CNSNews.com)Three months after the stabbing death of eight-year-old Kevin

Shifflett in Alexandria, Virginia, US Justice Department officials have yet to decide that afederal civil rights case is warranted.

Was the killing a hate crime? If it was, does the Clinton Justice Department care? Whenthe victim is white and the suspect is black, does the case automatically get little or noattention?


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A spokesperson for the Justice Department acknowledges only that the department isaware of reports that have been in the media that [the Kevin Shifflett murder] mayhave a racial motive, that officers are monitoring the situation, and that we certainlylook at the information thats presented us and make the determination that we feel isappropriate.

By contrast, Attorney General Janet Reno recently met with the family of RaynardJohnson, a 17-year-old black man who allegedly hanged himself. While black activistslike Reverend Jesse Jackson have labeled Johnsons death a lynching, two autopsies,including one paid for by Johnsons family, found that the injuries were consistent with

suicide and there was no evidence of foul play.

The Justice Department also launched a preliminary investigation in West Virginia intothe killing of Arthur J.R. Warren Jr., a black homosexual man, after the Deputy

Attorney General met with the family, even though, according to reports, FBI officialsdetermined there is no reason the case would fall under federal jurisdiction.

The involvement of the NAACP and the Human Rights Campaign led the JusticeDepartment into direct involvement in the case, according to Kara Peterman, aspokeswoman for the Justice Departments civil rights division.

The disparity in the handling of the cases proves the Justice Department willinvestigate anything except European-American cases, according to Louis Calabro,president of the European-American Issues Forum who spoke out against thedepartments handling of the Kevin Shifflett murder case.

If it is European-American victims, they want nothing to do with it, but if it has to dowith other racial ethnic groups, they want everything to do with it, Calabro said.

Calabro believes the disparity of coverage between the Warren and Shifflett cases isnot a question of ignoring one case.Its a question of the President of the United States that showsthat the president isnteven aware that white people or European-American people are victims of hatecrimesor hes not concerned with it, Calabro said.

Calabro sent an official request for FBI investigation of Alexandria, VA. Kevin Shifflettmurder to the FBI Washington Field Office.

We asked them to investigatethe charge by the Washington Times that the policedepartment withheld information from their own personnel regarding the racial aspectof the crime, Calabro said. Of course they dont answer us.

[The Justice Department] is going to open the door for anything, Calabro said. Theyshould be in the Kevin Shifflett case because theres indication that in fact the localauthorities were attempting to conceal racial aspect[s].


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A suspect in the Shifflett case, who has not yet been charged, allegedly left a racistnote in his hotel room, threating to kill white children. In 1993, the suspect alsoreportedly beat a man with a hammer while calling his victim whitey.

Peterman had no knowledge of any contact made by Reno or her top lieutenants with

the Shifflett family. A telephone call from the Justice Department to the Shifflett familywould be a local call since Alexandria is located just a few miles from the JusticeDepartments Washington headquarters.

Do you meana condolence call? I would actually have to talk with the AttorneyGenerals personal assistant to see if any of that call [was made], Peterman said. Idont know what personal correspondence the Attorney General has had or not had.

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Black Kills 8 Year Old White Boy in Knife Attack