A year after a teenager was shot and killed near Dunbar High School, his family continues calling for justice as the D.C. U.S. Attorney’s Office says it can’t move forward with charges in the case.
Despite the U.S. attorney’s decision, Maurice Jackson’s family is still advocating for charges to be filed.
Video from Sept. 26, 2023, shows the 16-year-old boy walking on the sidewalk a few blocks from Dunbar before he encountered a group and a fight broke out. A gun was pulled, and Maurice was shot.
“He didn’t do anything to anybody,” said Maurice’s mother, Brittany Malloy. “He was standing there … He ran. Someone shot at him. He fell. The crossing guard let him fall to the ground.”
D.C. police and the U.S. attorney worked the case before deciding not to move forward with charges.
“Hurt, disbelief, anger,” Malloy said. “It’s clear as day. There’s a video. You can clearly see that this was not self-defense.”
“We express our deepest condolences to Mr. Jackson’s family,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement. “When prosecuting a suspect for murder, in addition to proving the elements of the crime, we must also be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the suspect was not acting in self-defense or defense of another. This is a very high standard. We work with MPD’s homicide branch to determine whether enough evidence exists to meet this high standard. Based on our combined decades of experience with policing and prosecuting, we typically agree on when we have enough evidence to proceed and when we don’t.”
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