I’ve been using the space to rag on Marc Fisher, the WaPo’s resident urban-grit columnist and all-around bleeder for blaming the D.C. government (and by extension, us D.C. taxpayers) for insufficiently beating our breasts over the January shooting death of 14-year-old Jahkema Princess Hansen, who had witnessed an earlier murder in the Sursum Corda housing project where she lived. (See The Princess Diaries, Feb. 3.)
It is always sad and unfortunate when a youngster is killed in the drug-related shooting wars endemic in big cities. But Fisher, in three separate columns on the subject, had painted Princess as a math-loving, law school-aspiring little innocent whom the police had failed to protect adequately. He painted Princess’s welfare-mom, Judyann Hansen, who had two sons in prison for drug-dealing and was out clubbing on the night of the murder, as “a wanderer in search of love and stability.” It turned out that in truth Princess hardly ever went to school. She had refused to cooperate with the police, telling them that she hadn’t seen anything of the other murder. The police say they warned Princess that she was likely to be killed if she went back to the Sursum Corda premises–a warning that she ignored. In addition, Judyann Hansen seems to have known perfectly well that her daughter was in danger but had decided to leave her at home alone on the night of the Jan. 23 murder.
Now it has emerged that Princess had actually been the girlfriend of 28-year-old Marquette Ward, who is accused of slaying the earlier victim, 21-year-old Mario J. Evans, who died at 3:45 a.m. on Jan. 18 at Sursum Corda after a quarrel with Ward over the price of a PCP-laced marijuana cigarette. On the day of her death, police believe that Princess contacted Ward and tried to persuade him to pay her for her silence. She was also seen at Sursum Corda that day talking to 22-year-old Franklin Evans, an alleged drug-gang enforcer who is charged with first-degree murder (seven shots into Princess’s head, torso, and legs) in connection with her death. Evans, who now, like Ward, is being held without bond in jail, is the brother of a former boyfriend of Princess’s.
All in all, this is a sad tale of a pretty young girl who was never properly supervised and who fell under the influence of a very bad crowd. I don’t fault poor, dead Princess–but I do fault Marc Fisher for trying to whitewash the facts and then heap blame upon the rest of us hapless D.C. citizens. (I note that Fisher has been lying low of late on the Hansen case; maybe he’s a wee bit ashamed of himself.) Sorry, Marc, but the only thing we ought to feel guilty about in the matter of Princess is underwriting with our tax dollars the housing projects where drug sales and murders are routine events.