WASHINGTON - A 32-year-old Northeast District of Columbia man, Rudy Andrews, was found guilty today by a Superior Court jury of First Degree Premeditated Murder while Armed and Possession of a Firearm During a Crime of Violence for a violent shooting he committed in 2007 during a home invasion in Northeast Washington, D.C., U.S. Attorney Jeffrey A. Taylor announced.

The jury first returned a partial verdict yesterday, finding the defendant guilty of First Degree Burglary while Armed, First Degree Felony Murder while Armed, and related weapons offenses, and returned the additional verdicts today, ultimately finding the defendant guilty of all offenses charged in the indictment.

Andrews, of the 4400 block of Hunt Place, NE, Washington, D.C., is scheduled to be sentenced on February 11, 2009, before the Honorable Robert Morin. The defendant faces a mandatory minimum sentence of thirty (30) years of incarceration when sentenced.

According to the government’s evidence presented at trial, the homicide occurred inside an apartment at 309 54th Street, NE, Washington, D.C. (PSA 602), at approximately 3:00 a.m. on Sunday, January 28, 2007. The decedent, Louis Bigsby, was in the apartment with others before the shooting began. The apartment was frequently used by the decedent and witnesses to ingest illicit substances such as heroin and cocaine, as well as for sales of these substances.

The decedent had known the defendant, Rudy Andrews, for some time before the murder, and the relationship between the two had become tense – particularly after the decedent had, weeks before the murder, tried to hit the defendant with a pan after the defendant failed to pay money related to a drug transaction.

On January 28, 2007, the decedent was inside the bathroom at the back of the apartment when the defendant appeared at the door, which was secured by an iron gate. A witness let the defendant inside and locked the gate, before noticing that the defendant had a revolver in his hand. The defendant then demanded that the gate be opened so as to allow the entrance of a second, masked and armed individual who was standing just outside the gate.

The gate was opened, and the terrified witnesses fled the scene as the defendant and the masked man ran to the back. Shots were heard being fired as witnesses fled the apartment. A nearby police officer was flagged down and entered the apartment as the smell of gunpowder was still in the air, but the suspects were nowhere to be found. The decedent was found lying in the bathtub, unresponsive, with eleven (11) gunshot wounds. A ballistics expert subsequently determined that two bullets recovered from an autopsy of the decedent were fired from two separate weapons.

In announcing the verdict, U.S. Attorney Taylor praised the work of Metropolitan Police Department Detectives George Blackwell, Lee Littlejohn, and Alfred Austin-Braxton. He also commended the work of former Metropolitan Police Department Officer Kezzi Henderson; MPD Mobile Crime Officers William Hyatt and Keith Slaughter; Officer David Murray; and Detectives Kenneth Goldberg and Kimberly Lawrence. He also expressed appreciation for the work of Dr. Donna Vincenti of the Medical Examiner’s Office for the State of Maryland, and for the work of Firearms Examiner Robert Poole. Mr. Taylor additionally praised the work of Legal Assistants Mary Doster and Doloris Young, Paralegals Marian Russell and Sandra Lane, and Paralegal Supervisor Wanda Queen; Kimberly Smith, Errol Spears, and Joe Calvarese of Litigation Services; and Victim-Witness Advocates Marcey Rinker and Jordan Ney. Mr. Taylor also thanked Assistant U.S. Attorney Samuel Ramer, who commendably helped out with a preliminary hearing while the trial was in progress. Finally, he thanked Assistant U.S. Attorney Stephen J. Gripkey, who indicted and tried the case.