Two men have been arrested and charged with first-degree murder after allegedly tying up a man and setting him on fire inside a Logan Circle apartment building in February.
On Tuesday, D.C. police announced the arrest of Rico Rashaad Barnes, 36, of Northwest D.C., in connection with the case. On Wednesday night, police announced additional charges against a second suspect, 39-year-old Alphonso Walker, also of Northwest D.C., who was already in police custody on separate charges.
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During the early morning hours of Feb. 11, emergency personnel were called to the 1400 block of Rhode Island Avenue NW for reports of smoke. Firefighters entered one of the building’s units to find it engulfed in flames.
After putting out the fire, they found an unconscious man lying face down with his wrists and ankles bound with neckties, according to court documents. The man, identified as 40-year-old Syed Hammad Hussain, of D.C., was pronounced dead on the scene.
Officials also saw blood around Hussain’s head, on the floor and on the wall next to him. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner ruled his cause of death to be blunt force trauma to the head and ligature strangulation, and said the fire was started after he’d died.
At a news conference Tuesday afternoon, D.C.’s Interim Chief of Police Jeffery Carroll announced the arrest, calling it “a particularly heinous case.”
Cmdr. Kevin Kentish with the Criminal Investigations Division said video evidence from inside the apartment building showed Hussain was followed into the building by two suspects, who assaulted him in the lobby and then forced him toward his apartment unit.
“We do not believe Mr. Hussain had any prior relationships with our suspects before the day he was deceased,” Kentish said.
The suspects also took multiple items, including a bicycle and coats, from inside Hussain’s apartment.
“In this case, it was just an innocent person who was walking home who was taken advantage of, which is very, very scary,” Carroll said.
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