Opinion ID: 1908635
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: The Chase by the Police.

Text: Some forty-five minutes before McWeay's body was discovered, Special Agent James Cooke of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was driving a patrol van with an MPD officer as part of a combined federal-local law enforcement task force. Cooke saw a man he later identified as Landon walk out of an alley and cross the 400 block of Ingraham Street, N.W., to a green Blazer, where two other men stood at the open driver- and passenger-side doors. Cooke noticed Landon because he resembled a suspect in an unrelated shooting. The three men entered the Blazer and drove off. Cooke followed the Blazer through the Northwest and Northeast sections of Washington. After Cooke activated the van's emergency lights, the Blazer stopped for a moment on Oglethorpe Street, N.E. Later that morning, police returned to that portion of the street and found the nine-millimeter semi-automatic Beretta pistol that killed McWeay. The Blazer sped off again, and the chase proceeded into Maryland. At one point, the Blazer's front passenger, who wore a distinctive leather jacket and brandished a pistol, opened his door and nearly fell from the vehicle. The pistol fell to the ground as Landon helped the passenger back into the Blazer. Then the two of them jumped from the Blazer and fled by foot. They were pursued by Agent Cooke's partner, the MPD officer, but they escaped. Cooke continued to follow the Blazer until its driver also jumped out and escaped in the same direction as the other two suspects. Cooke then returned to where the pistol fell, and he recovered the .380 caliber semi-automatic pistol that was used to shoot Cherrico. Other officers searched the area where the three suspects fled and recovered a leather jacket, which Cooke identified as the same jacket worn by the Blazer's front passenger; at trial, Barkley identified the jacket as the one he believed Green was wearing that night. The jacket pockets contained McWeay's pager, the keys to McWeay's Corvette, and Cherrico's gold herringbone necklace, which he kept in a drawer in his apartment. Police technicians recovered the appellants' fingerprints from the inside of the Blazer, but they could not recover fingerprints from either of the guns.