Police ID pedestrian killed in Montgomery Co. hit-and-run crash

By Nick Iannelli | @NickWTOP
June 8, 2018 4:00 pm

Suspects beat, robbed man before fatal Montgomery Co. hit-and-run: Police

By William Vitka | @vitkaWTOP
June 23, 2018 12:59 pm

WASHINGTON — The suspects involved in a fatal Montgomery County hit-and-run crash beat and robbed a man before he was struck and killed, police said Saturday.

Gregory Jonathan Atwood, 40, of Silver Spring, died at the intersection of Georgia and Hewitt avenues around 4 a.m. Friday, June 8, after the assault and robbery. ... Police say the suspects did nothing to help him as he crawled away. And the drivers who struck him did not stay at the scene.

On Tuesday, June 19, detectives arrested Mohammed Salous, 17, and charged him as an adult with assault-related offenses. ... The next day, police arrested Kenneth Sahr Kpakima (also spelled Kapakima), 21, and charged him with assault and armed robbery.

A 15-year-old female suspect was also identified but she has not been charged yet.

Public Safety

Police: Hit-and-run victim had crawled on to roadway after being severely beaten

By Dan Morse June 22 Email the author

To the investigators who first arrived, the scene looked like a standard, if brutal, hit-and-run. ... Greg Atwood, 40, lay dead on a six-lane road in suburban Maryland just before 4 a.m. The driver who’d struck him was long gone. ... Then the investigators noticed the trail of blood. ... Rather than matching the direction of the traffic, the trail went right, across a sidewalk, and into a shallow, wooded ravine. Investigators clambered down and found a walking stick, beloved by Atwood, covered in blood.

The clues, described in court filings and hearings in Montgomery County this week, led to a chilling accusation about what had happened to Atwood, an eccentric, likable artist who in recent years had lived in a residential shelter and then a group home.

Investigators say that shortly before Atwood was run over on June 8, he was accosted by three attackers — ages 21, 17 and 15 — who robbed him of his backpack and forced him into the ravine. The older two followed him.



Greg Atwood shown in a photo taken around 2010. (Family photo)

“They beat him with sticks, beat him with his own walking stick, knocked him unconscious,” Assistant State’s Attorney Mark Anderson said in court Thursday. ... Then, as Atwood crawled from the ravine and onto Georgia Avenue, where he collapsed, the prosecutor said the three did nothing to help him. They “watched him get run over by a car,” Anderson said in court, recounting what investigators said one suspect described to them. “Mr. Atwood was dead. And they left him.”
....

Dan Morse covers courts and crime in Montgomery County. He arrived at the paper in 2005, after reporting stops at the Wall Street Journal, Baltimore Sun and Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser, where he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. He is the author of "The Yoga Store Murder." Follow https://twitter.com/morsedan

Public Safety

Two teen beating suspects reportedly watched their victim crawl into traffic. Now they’re charged with murder.

By Dan Morse August 8 at 8:39 AM [link:dan.morse@washpost.com|Email the author]

For two months, detectives in Maryland tried to piece together the final steps of Greg Atwood’s life. ... One moment, the friendly 40-year-old — holding a walking stick in his hand and cans of beer in his backpack — ambled along a darkened street just before 3 a.m. The next moment, he was accosted, robbed of his backpack and beaten so badly he seemingly tried to escape by crawling across a six-lane road before collapsing midway.

Now, in new court records in Montgomery County, authorities have for the first time laid out why they think the actions of at least two of the alleged attackers — a 15-year-old girl and a 17-year-old boy — amounted to murder. ... “The suspects watched the victim lay motionless in the travel lanes of Georgia Avenue,” detectives wrote in an arrest warrant for the 15-year-old. “Approximately a minute later, the suspects watched a vehicle run over the victim.” ... The suspects left without calling 911, authorities say, and headed off to an all-night McDonald’s. ... Atwood was struck by at least one additional car. Neither vehicle stopped, and it is not clear whether the drivers knew what they had done.

Atwood’s passing jarred those who knew him best. In interviews, they described Atwood as a skilled audio-video technician who had set up systems at events and concerts. He wrote poetry, sculpted and painted, even as he struggled with depression and alcohol abuse. ... “Just an in­cred­ibly sweet guy,” said a former girlfriend who lived with him from 2009 to 2013.

Atwood lived in recent years at a residential shelter in Rockville and a group home just north of Aspen Hill, about a mile from where he died. At the home, he liked circulating among rooms, stopping in for chats. The door to his room — decked out with a metallic skull, a six-inch smiling yellow emoji and a block-letter-written slogan advising all to break free what holds them back — led to an orderly lineup of computers, paintings, photographs and plants.
....

Dan Morse covers courts and crime in Montgomery County. He arrived at the paper in 2005, after reporting stops at the Wall Street Journal, Baltimore Sun and Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser, where he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. He is the author of "The Yoga Store Murder." Follow https://twitter.com/morsedan