A 17-year-old Chantilly boy with suspected gang connections is in the Juvenile Detention Center after being arrested and charged with attempted malicious wounding. (Centre View is withholding his name because he is a juvenile).
In an Oct. 9 affidavit for a search warrant to seek evidence in his Shenandoah Crossing home, Fairfax County police Officer Nickole Smith detailed the case against him. She said a witness told her about a stabbing that had just happened and described the suspect.
Smith found the suspect hiding behind a nearby bush and challenged him, and he ran home. At the same time, the alleged victim approached the officer in front of the suspect's home, told her about the incident and said he wasn't injured.
"THE VICTIM stated that, when the suspect approached him outside of the apartment building, the suspect started a verbal altercation with the victim," wrote Smith. "The confrontation escalated to a physical altercation. The suspect [allegedly] kicked the victim in the groin [and] used a knife to cause a mark on the victim's left forearm."
She wrote that the suspect "used the knife in a menacing, threatening manner by swinging at and lunging at the victim. The victim described the knife as a 6-inch, silver blade with a dark handle. Another witness described the knife in a similar manner, adding that the hilt portion was silver, extended from the handle and curved up and inward toward the blade."
Smith noted that police found the suspect, the Chantilly teen, inside his home, "wearing clothing that matched the descriptions given by both witnesses and the victim." However, he did not have the knife in his possession and "refused to cooperate in locating [it]." Police searched the area where he was apprehended, but did not find it there, either.
"During interviews of both witnesses and the victim by [myself], it was stated that the suspect bragged that he was a member of a violent, criminal, street gang known as Mara Salvatrucha 13 [MS-13]," wrote Smith. "This gang has identifying symbols and signs that are associated with membership and association."
SHE THEN sought permission to seek any such items, including gang paraphernalia, drawings, letters, photographs, bandanas, videotapes, DVDs and clothing — as well as the knife — in the youth's apartment. Police executed the search, Oct. 9, seizing a belt with buckle, notebook, baseball cap, T-shirt, BB gun, Rosary beads, false alien card and false social security card.
He appeared Tuesday afternoon in Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court for his preliminary hearing, but the prosecutor asked for a continuance because, although subpoenas were issued, his witnesses hadn't shown up. The defense attorney objected and asked Judge Gayl Carr to consider releasing her client from jail on electronic monitoring at home.
But the teen's probation officer said he should remain in jail, and the prosecutor agreed, saying, "This is a serious offense. He was on probation for only nine days, maximum, before the offense occurred. When [police] were searching for the knife which he threw in the bushes, they found a large amount of information about MS-13. This defendant could be a danger to society."
The teen's attorney said there's no evidence that her client's connected to that gang, but Carr concurred with the prosecutor, explaining that "electronic monitoring is not appropriate in this case."
She then continued the case to Nov. 12 and kept the suspect in the Juvenile Detention Center. She also ordered the subpoenas to be reissued.