News broke via the Cleveland Park email list today that a driver for the Uber sedan service allegedly raped a customer in Cleveland Park early Friday morning—and the crime was caught on tape.
Officer Hugh Carew, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Police Department, confirms that police are investigating a forcible sexual abuse case in Cleveland Park that occurred on Dec. 8. According to the incident report, the crime occurred between 2:30 a.m. and 3:30 a.m. on 36th Street NW. No arrests have been made, Carew says.
According to the victim's statement to police, the suspect came up from behind, pushing her against a garage door. The victim hit her head on the ground, before the suspect raped her. Notably, the incident report does not mention Uber.
Read more Uber Driver Accused on Cleveland Park Email List of Raping Customer
Following today's shooting in Newtown, Conn., gun control activists are wasting no time pushing for tougher firearm laws. To start, a coalition of gun control groups is planning a rally in front of the White House at 4:30 p.m.
Ladd Everitt, a spokesman for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, pushed back against the idea that the event is a vigil. Instead, according to Everitt, it's about pressuring Barack Obama to take action on the issue.
"If you can't speak out about the need for tough gun laws after a classroom of kindergartners are massacred, then you ain't got it in ya," Everitt says.
White House photo by Shutterstock.
When an attachment's named something like "sexy.exe," how do you not click it? That kind of thinking is exactly what's landed WJLA's Rosslyn newsroom in trouble today, DCRTV reports. According to a newsroom memo, a porn-themed virus circulating through the newsroom is wreaking havoc.
"If you see something like porn.exe or sexy.exe or any other .exe files on [various] drives DO NOT CLICK ON ANYTHING," writes network technology manager David Van Veen in the memo obtained by DCRTV.
Read more Porn Virus “Crippling” WJLA Computers
Remember Wednesday's Fairfax County machete and chain fight, which took place in front of a burning tow truck? Remember how the Fairfax County Police Department was pretty short on details? Well, wonder no more, because we have some more information about history's greatest duel.
The alleged machete-wielding culprit in the fight is 32-year-old Woodbridge resident Reu Ortiz Cruz. Cruz has been charged with arson and malicious wounding.
Cruz allegedly set the vehicle fire in a Richmond Highway used car parking lot before attacking his chain-toting victim, according to Fairfax County Police Department spokesman Eddy Azcárate.
Read more More Details of Machete-Chain Fight Revealed
Columbia Road NW, December 13
A morning roundup of news, opinion, and links from Washington City Paper and around the District. Send tips and ideas to citydesk@washingtoncitypaper.com.
Sign up: To get District Line Daily—or any of our other email newsletters—sent straight to your mailbox, click here.
Should District taxpayers pony up $1,500 for Councilmember Jim Graham to remember Elizabeth Taylor? Graham says he was representing the District.
LEADING THE MORNING NEWS:
- Legal D.C. medicinal marijuana gets closer to legalization. [Post]
- Council throwing serious investigation noise over lotto. [Examiner]
- Once again, D.C. region really rich [WTOP]
RECENT CITY PAPER STORIES TO HELP YOU MAKE SENSE OF YOUR DAY:
Read more District Line Daily: Liz
Clean Up: A state legislator in Virginia wants to implement a 5 cent bag tax like the District's. +3
Oh Baby, Yoouuu: The Biz Markie LivingSocial cooking class is tonight. It's sold out, but there's another one next month. +2
Read more The Needle: Bag It
Looks like a little bit of good news is coming out of the strange story of Patrick Moran, the son of Virginia Rep. Jim Moran. Moran pleaded guilty yesterday to attacking his girlfriend outside Columbia Heights bar The Getaway earlier this month, and while both Moran's girlfriend and his father say her injuries were accidental, the bar wants nothing to do with them.
In a post on its Facebook page first reported by DCist, The Getaway denied that Moran drank at their bar the night he attacked his girlfriend. "As an establishment that serves alcohol and also a member of the Columbia Heights and DC community we want all of our neighbors and patrons to be safe from this kind of violence," the post reads.
Read more Bar Connected to Moran Arrest to Donate Sales to Anti-Violence Group
With the Washington Post's vice president for human resources predicting "an urgent need to reduce costs," it looks like 2013 will be a lean year for the paper's staff. But at least for now, the good times are still rolling in the Washington Post Co. executive suite. On Monday, six executives at the Post's parent company received nearly $2.3 million in bonus Post stock, according to new SEC disclosures.
Post publisher Katharine Weymouth took the lion's share of the bonuses, which were awarded under executives' incentive plans. Weymouth received 2,500 shares of the stock in the company, which, according to the stock's Monday price of $372.94 per share, was valued at $932,350.
Read more Washington Post Execs Get $2.3 Million in Stock Bonuses
3000 Block of 16th Street NW, December 7
Page three photos are also in this gallery.
Will Fairfax County soon rival Florida for the title of our nation's weirdest place? You might think so after hearing that, yesterday, a man in the county wielding a machete (!) fought a man wielding a chain (!!), all in front of a burning tow truck (!!!).
As first reported by Lorton Patch, police were called to the vehicle fire and unusual-weapons fight in a used car dealership lot on Richmond Highway around 1:20 p.m. Police quickly arrested the guy with the machete, while the fire department put out the tow truck blaze.
"Basically, we received several phone calls today referencing a guy swinging a machete, a tow truck on fire, and a guy swinging a chain," says Fairfax County Master Police Officer Eddy Azcárate, a spokesman for the county's police department.
Read more Man With Machete Fights Man With Chain, in Front of a Burning Tow Truck
Judging by the number of mourners, Kevin Ridge's first funeral has his second one beat.
Despite the funeral director's surprising insistence on a closed casket, the Aug. 14, 2011, service at a Methodist church in Murrells Inlet, S.C., attracted well-wishers from across the country. Obviously, the 51-year-old professor had made some mark on the world before his death in a D.C. hotel room days earlier. Even mourners from Canada came, his family later recalled.
A little more than a week later, Ridge's mother, Sheila, found a letter on her porch. Its message was as simple as it was hard to process: "The body you buried was not your son."
Kevin Ridge's casket never contained his body at all, read the letter from the D.C. Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, according to a civil suit Sheila Ridge filed with Kevin's sisters last month against the District and two funeral homes. Instead, Kevin Ridge's grave held the decomposing body of an unidentified homeless man who had died months earlier.
Read more Return to Sender: How Did D.C. Ship the Wrong Body to South Carolina?
A morning roundup of news, opinion, and links from Washington City Paper and around the District. Send tips and ideas to citydesk@washingtoncitypaper.com.
Sign up: To get District Line Daily—or any of our other email newsletters—sent straight to your mailbox, click here.
In this week's Washington City Paper, on the streets today, for free: inside the turmoil at community radio station WPFW, as it tries to stay financially viable while remaining the voice of the city's underprivileged.
LEADING THE MORNING NEWS:
- Rep. Jim Moran's son pleads guilty to attacking his girlfriend, Moran claims it's an accident; so does the girlfriend. [WCP, WCP, WCP]
- Through settlements, D.C. tax assessments were lowered another $1.2 billion. [Post]
- Airports board getting federal oversight. [Examiner]
- Biking up in D.C. [Examiner]
- Military use map as big as a gym to show their role in the inauguration. [Post]
- Howard County executive picks up trash in Prince George's after losing bet on Pigskins game. [WTOP]
- GWU dean falls on her sword for college ranking screw-up that got school dropped from U.S. News and World Report. [Post]
- Burger justice: Clyde's employee gets 2 years for embezzling almost $650,000. [Examiner]
RECENT CITY PAPER STORIES TO HELP YOU MAKE SENSE OF YOUR DAY:
Read more District Line Daily: Pump Up the Volume
Mogul Passes: Joe L. Allbritton, whose Allbritton Communications was behind Politico, WJLA, and, uh, TBD, died today at 87. Allbritton's Riggs National Bank also laundered money for Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, which made for some interesting disparities in coverage between the Post and Allbritton-owned outlets. -4
Passenger Passed Over: Popular bar The Passenger will likely close or move by 2014 due to construction, says one of the developers behind an adjacent project. -5
Read more The Needle: R.I.P., Joe
Count at least one more person in for Rep. Jim Moran's claim that the incident that landed his son Patrick Moran in jail earlier this month was an accident: Patrick Moran's girlfriend. In an email statement released his girlfriend and forwarded by Moran's office this afternoon, she blamed her injuries from her head hitting a trashcan not on her boyfriend, but on a broken high heel.
"Pat and I were arguing, one of my high heels gave out, and I fell into the side of a trashcan," Moran's office quotes her saying. "On impact, I fractured my nose."
Read more Rep. Jim Moran’s Son’s Girlfriend Blames Broken High Heel for Injuries
