Seven people were killed in Prince George’s County in six days, from Thursday, Oct. 29, to Tuesday, Nov. 3, according to the county police department’s own releases and statements. Among the dead is a 13-year-old girl, shot in Langley Park. A 14-year-old girl who was with her is still in the hospital in critical condition.
Police say the killings are not connected to each other. At a news conference on Wednesday, Police Chief George Nader said most of them grew out of personal disputes that turned violent. He called them “impulse crimes.”
“People are solving disputes with weapons and violence rather than talking things out or walking away,” Nader said.
For families in the county, the facts that matter most are plain ones: the shootings happened in ordinary places, outside apartment buildings, inside a home, in a public park, and police say none of them was random. The department says it has added patrols in Langley Park, where two of the seven people died, and announced a new campaign against gun violence. County Executive Aisha Braveboy joined the chief at Wednesday’s briefing.
The Langley Park shooting
The youngest victim was Any Davalos, 13, of Silver Spring. Police say she and a 14-year-old girl were shot at about 1:50 a.m. on Tuesday, Nov. 3, in the 8100 block of 15th Avenue in Langley Park. Davalos died at the scene. The older girl was taken to a hospital in critical condition, where she remained this week. Police have not released her name.
Police say the girls knew the man accused of shooting them, and that the shooting followed an argument. Marcos Melendez-Umanzor, 20, of Hyattsville, was arrested late Tuesday. He is charged with first-degree and second-degree murder and with the attempted murder of the surviving girl, among other charges. There are 11 charges in all, according to court records reported by The Baltimore Banner. He is being held in jail without bond, the Prince George’s County State’s Attorney’s Office said. His lawyer could not be reached for comment on Thursday, The Banner reported.
According to court records, the surviving teenager helped detectives identify the suspect. Zark News is not repeating the details of how, out of care for a wounded child who is also a witness.
Davalos’s family has started an online fundraiser to help pay for her funeral. In it, written in Spanish, the family said they are heartbroken by her sudden and violent death and face costs they had not planned for.
Braveboy, the county executive, spoke about Davalos at Wednesday’s news conference. “Her life was just really beginning,” she said. “I thought about parents, family members, friends, who won’t see this young girl grow up to be a woman and how unfair that is.”
The other six killings
Three of the seven killings happened on a single day, Thursday, Oct. 29:
- Jose Edin Hernandez Vasquez, 26, of College Park, was found stabbed to death inside a home in the 9900 block of 51st Terrace in College Park at about 4:15 a.m.
- Derrick Bowen, 55, of Forestville, was found shot in the roadway in the 1700 block of Belle Haven Drive, in the Landover area, at about 5:15 a.m.
- Omar Jonathan Ventura Ajbal, 18, of Hyattsville, was found shot in Langley-Hampshire Neighborhood Park at about 10:55 a.m. A park worker found his body in a wooded part of the park.
On Saturday, Oct. 31, a man was found shot to death inside a home in the unit block of Quire Avenue in Capitol Heights, at about 4:35 a.m. Police have not released his name.
On Sunday, Nov. 1, Diontay Jackson, 20, of Landover, was shot in the 3200 block of 75th Avenue at about 1:10 p.m. He died at a hospital. Police have charged three people with first-degree murder in his death: De’Andre Reid, 23, of Riverdale, and Wonnae Bridgeforth, 26, of Landover, and Wonnese Bridgeforth, 24, of Upper Marlboro. All three are held without bond. Police say the shooting came out of a dispute among people who knew each other.
On Tuesday, Nov. 3, the same day Davalos was killed, Chrystopher Hagans, 24, was found shot inside an apartment in the 1900 block of Belle Haven Drive in Greater Landover at about 12:25 p.m. He died at the scene. Police say they are still working to identify suspects and a motive in his death.
What police say they are doing
Police say they have stepped up patrols in Langley Park and plan better lighting in the area, and that a new public campaign against gun violence will feature former offenders and victims of violence. The department has asked anyone with information about any of these cases to call its Homicide Unit at 301-516-2512.
“We will never lose sight of the human cost of violence,” Chief Nader said in a statement last week. “Even one murder is too many.”
One week is not a trend
One bad week does not by itself show where crime in the county is heading, and police were direct about the wider picture. In their Oct. 29 statement, the department said that before that day, murders in the county were down 33% compared with the same point last year, and down 55% compared with the same point in 2024. The department also said it had closed about 79% of this year’s murder cases.
Those are the county’s own numbers, stated before the worst of this week. What the last six days change, and what they do not, will depend on what happens next, and Zark News will keep following these cases as charges move through court.
