Ex-d.c. Officer Pleads Guilty to Sexually Abusing Two Teenage Girls

Washington Post
October 22, 2015

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/ex-dc-officer-pleads-guilty-to-sexually-abusing-two-teenage-girls/2015/10/22/737ca5e8-78fe-11e5-b9c1-f03c48c96ac2_story.html

A former D.C. police officer pleaded guilty Thursday to sexually abusing two teenage girls who attended the Southeast Washington church where he served as pastor, prosecutors said.

Darrell Best, 46, a 25-year D.C. police department veteran, admitted to one count of first-degree sexual abuse of a minor and one count of second-degree sexual abuse of a minor. Best also pleaded guilty to a child pornography charge.

If approved by U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, the plea agreement calls for Best to be sentenced to 18 years in prison, with a hearing date set for Feb. 26, according to the U.S. attorney’s office for the District.

The girls, ages 16 and 17, attended God-A Second Chance Ministry Church. Best admitted abusing one girl at his office at D.C. police headquarters and the other at his church, prosecutors said. One teen’s parents alerted police after the girl was confronted by Best’s fiancee, who found pictures on his phone, according to charging documents.

VIRGINIA

Parking dispute

gets violent

It happens often in the busy, crowded D.C. region — jockeying over a parking spot. But this time, it turned violent.

The incident occurred around 7:30 a.m. Monday at an apartment complex in the 7800 block of Sutter Lane, according to Fairfax County police.

Authorities said Kamadin Atabaki, 20, of Annandale pulled out a hatchet and threatened another man. Atabaki was arrested and charged with attempted malicious wounding.

The other person was not injured, police said. The victim told police that he had backed his white work van into a parking spot when another car came “speeding into the space” next to him, almost hitting him, said Lucy Caldwell, a spokeswoman for the Fairfax police department.

Man is charged

in death of daughter

A Leesburg man was arrested Wednesday on charges that he killed his 9-month-old daughter a year ago.

Devyn Ellis died of a severe head injury on Oct. 5, 2014. On Monday, a grand jury in Loudoun County indicted her father, Diamante Travon Ellis, 23, on charges of second-degree murder and felony child abuse.

Shortly after Ellis was arrested and held without bond, the Leesburg police department said in a statement Wednesday that Devyn was first hospitalized in Loudoun on Oct. 2. She was transported to Children’s Hospital in the District the next day, where doctors called police to say that her injuries suggested that she had been abused. She died two days later. Leesburg police spokesman Jeff Dube declined to elaborate on how she was injured.

Dube said that Ellis was considered a person of interest from the time his daughter died, but the D.C. medical examiner’s office took almost a year to send its report to Loudoun .