A 5-year-old boy is dead. Does DC’s government share the blame?
The tragic death of a Murch kindergartner suggests that we can’t count on our city’s leaders.
DeAndre Pettus, a 5-year-old student at Murch Elementary, which my son attends, was killed Oct 6. While no cause of death has been revealed yet, his father was arrested and charged with cruelty to a child before being released, pending an Oct. 28 preliminary hearing.
The entire Murch Elementary school community is reeling. How could this happen? And how can we make sure it doesn’t happen again?
I listened to a neighborhood meeting this week that focused on DeAndre’s death.
A woman living in the building next door to DeAndre’s described witnessing child abuse for years, and her frustration when nothing was done about it.
At one point, she said, she complained to management at Connecticut House, where DeAndre lived, after a concerning incident involving a girl. "If anything happens to this little girl," she recalled saying, "the blood is on your hands."
“I’m not the only person next door to the Connecticut House that hears all of this and witnesses it and tries to intervene and tries to affect it,” she added later. “It’s a systematic failure all around.”
Another woman in the meeting described moving out of Connecticut House after 32 years of residence because she feared for her life. She described that a neighbor threatened her life.
A current resident of Connecticut House, who said she’s part of the city’s programs for rapid rehousing and assistance for needy families, described services for neighbors in need as woefully incomplete.
She took issue with government representatives in the meeting who mentioned that families sometimes refuse the city’s services.
“There isn’t any support. It doesn’t actually exist. They’re not actually giving us case workers,” she said, and added that she didn’t even know who her caseworkers were.
Her criticisms come two years after a scathing report on DC’s Housing Authority outlined failures like inadequate management of the city’s voucher program and poor oversight of its policies and operations.
News stories about DeAndre’s death describe an apartment in shambles, with “large amounts of garbage, clothing and assorted property … strewn about in every room.”
DC’s Child and Family Services Agency had been in touch with Pettus’s family since at least 2023, we’re told. Yet where were they this month? Why didn’t they intervene?
We received no answers in the neighborhood meeting. The Department of Human Services backed out of the meeting a couple hours before it began.
The only bright spot from our government was Councilmember Matt Frumin, who attended the start of the meeting. He acknowledged issues, and agreed to partake in an Oct. 28 meeting.
I think one woman summed things up best — “The mayor, the city, the departments under her owe us some type of plans or action where they’re going to resolve some of these issues so that we’re not at the point now where children are being killed.”
Another concerning part of DeAndre’s death is how our criminal justice had engaged — or not engaged — previously with his father.
DeAndre’s father was charged with several felonies last year, but prosecutors asked for the charges to be dismissed. Why were the charges dropped? The US Attorney’s office, which had the charges dismissed, won’t say. But we know that the US Attorney follows through on far fewer cases than in past years.
If the US Attorney had followed through on its case, would DeAndre still be alive? Would Murch students still have a classmate? Would two girls still have a brother?
I’m heartbroken by DeAndre’s death. I check news sources every day, hoping to learn more about what went wrong, and how we can do better in the future. I want to believe someone in power is working to learn from this, and prevent the next tragedy.
I strongly believe that a great city government would prevent deaths like DeAndre’s. We all need to work together to pressure our government to make meaningful changes.
The meeting — where our government offered no plan for improvements — left me fearful that we’ll soon see another death like DeAndre’s.
I’m not willing to let this drop until we see changes. Please get in touch and work with me, matt@51problems.com.
DeAndre should not die in vain.