Comments on: Man Accused of Killing 9 Year Old in Columbia Heights Found Dead in DC Jail

By: Iknewhim

Iknewhim — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:25:57 +0000

ontheDCline,

He took his life because he was remorseful for killing a child (he actually loved kids) and felt his family (4 kids) would be better off without him.

By: ballslightning

ballslightning — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 02:18:19 +0000

Good riddance.

By: ontheDCline

ontheDCline — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 22:08:36 +0000

I heard the piece this morning – sad on many levels but again no accountability – it seems the guy had tried to kill himself when he first went in to jail and even with that he was not put under “suicide watch”. How is that “smart and responsible” for the police. Agreed maybe he deserved to rot in jail for the rest of his life and when he realized what was coming to him he decided to take action but how and why was this necessary?

By: cookietime420

cookietime420 — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 16:39:06 +0000

I agree Buck, this death does kinda smell…..But however it went down, there was no happy ending to this story. Pena screwed up in such a monumental way. His life was over the moment he fired that shot. It will be interesting to see if the story ends here.

By: Petworth Diva

Petworth Diva — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 15:58:02 +0000

I’m quite surprised and pleased with the readers of this blog, who controlled themselves and didn’t write all kinds of smart stuff on the news that this child killer did himself in. Everyone enjoy Thanksgiving…

By: Buck Turgidson

Buck Turgidson — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 15:17:57 +0000

Shades of Ronnie White, the alleged cop-killer who was found hanged in his solitary confinement cell, dead of an “apparent suicide.” Strangely, the prison guards “didn’t see nothing” and the video camera “malfunctioned”.

But that was in PG county. I’m sure nothing like that would happen in DC’s fine jail facility.

By: Mandrake

Mandrake — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 12:31:29 +0000

get the gangs off the streets and keep them off the streets by whatever means necessary. the Latino population is being terrorized by these thugs that have no regard for human life.

By: Derek

Derek — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 04:35:57 +0000

My god, this is awful

By: Jay'O

Jay'O — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 03:10:03 +0000

This is really sad on so many levels. The family’s devestated by the murder of their nine yr. old sone. Some young man, who 20 years ago was just a kid, joins MS-13 and terrorizes a family and then either kills himself or is murdered in jail by his own gang.

MPD had a gang liason unit dedicated to working the area with a foucs on Latino Gangs. Unfortunately, Cheif Lanier disbanded it. They did a great job getting to really know the kids involved in the gangs as well as their families. I’ve heard that while the program was in place (2003 – 2007) there were ZERO gang murders. Then, Chief Lanier made them responsible for all gang & crew activity across the entire city and diluted all their work.

We need to let Fenty know we need this program back in place!

By: Tired

Tired — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 00:30:18 +0000

Reminds me of one more thing to be thankful for, the hard hard and perhaps thankless (and underpaid) work done by our police force, including homicide detectives, fugitive task forces, youth/gang violence experts, and of course K-9 officers (because dogs are our friends). Hope they get to spend some quality and peaceful time with their loved ones this holiday. How about some more hugs and vittles sharing everyday instead of sharing the pain of guns and bullets.