District Man Found Guilty of First-Degree Murder While Armed In 2015 Slaying in Southeast Washington

            WASHINGTON - Eugene Burns, 25, of Washington, D.C., has been found guilty by a jury of first-degree murder while armed and related weapons offenses for killing a man in a Southeast Washington apartment, U.S. Attorney Channing D. Phillips announced today.

            Burns was found guilty by a jury on July 12, 2017, following a trial in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. The Honorable Hiram E. Puig-Lugo scheduled sentencing for Sept. 29, 2017. Burns faces a potential sentence of life in prison for the crimes.

            According to the government’s evidence, Burns had been in a drug-related dispute with the victim, Onyekachi Emmanuel Osuchukwu III, of Woodland Hills, Calif., and began planning to kill him. On Nov. 14, 2015, Mr. Osuchukwu flew into the Washington, D.C. area. That day, Burns lured Mr. Osuchukwu to Burns’s mother’s apartment in the 2900 block of Second Street SE. He confronted Mr. Osuchukwu and shot and killed him before fleeing the scene.

            The next day, the defendant, along with two relatives, returned to the apartment and Burns supposedly “discovered” that his best friend had been killed. After a call to 911, Mr. Osuchuwku, 24, was found on the living room floor with multiple gunshot wounds. An investigation led to Burns’s arrest in December 2015, and he has been in custody ever since.

            In announcing the verdict, U.S. Attorney Phillips commended the work of the detectives, officers, and mobile crime technicians who worked on the case from the Metropolitan Police Department. He also expressed appreciation for the assistance provided by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, Washington Division, the FBI’s Cellular Analysis Survey Team, and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority. He acknowledged the efforts of those who worked on the case from the U.S. Attorney’s Office, including Michael Ambrosino, Special Counsel for DNA and Forensic Evidence Litigation; Supervisory Paralegal Specialist Sharon Newman; Paralegal Specialists Kelly Blakeney and Lashone Samuels; Diana Lim, David Foster; M. Laverne Perry, Tanya Via and Debra Cannon, all of the Victim/Witness Assistance Unit; Investigative Analyst Zachary McMenamin; Litigation Technology Specialists Leif Hickling, and William Henderson; former Litigation Technology Specialist Aneela Bhatia; Forensic Operations/Program Specialist Benjamin Kagan-Guthrie; Computer Forensics Criminal Investigator John Marsh, and Law Clerk Alexandra Maher.

            Finally, U.S. Attorney Phillips commended the work of Assistant U.S. Attorneys Charles Willoughby, Jr. and Kevin Flynn, who investigated and prosecuted the case.