A 42-year-old homeless man has been arrested in connection with the July 19 murder of a Carpenter’s Shelter resident who was fatally stabbed near the homeless shelter on North Patrick Street. On Aug. 10, the Alexandria Police Department announced the arrest of Gerald Dwayne Curtis, who was also staying at the Carpenter’s Shelter at the time of the murder. Through a series of interviews, investigators learned that Curtis got into a heated argument with another Carpenter’s Shelter resident — Ricardo Lloyd Cherry, a 29-year-old Alexandria man who had been staying at the Patrick Street homeless shelter for about a month before he was killed. By the time the Alexandria Police Department issued a warrant for Curtis’ arrest, he had apparently fled the city limits.
"We had an indication was that he was in D.C.," said Commonwealth’s Attorney S. Randolph Sengel. "So we asked a regional task force to help locate him."
Sengel said that Cherry and Curtis had been seen arguing repeatedly throughout the day of the murder, yet employees at the Carpenter’s Shelter said Curtis never returned after Cherry’s death. So Alexandria city officials called the Capitol Area Regional Task Force of the United States Marshals Service, which helped track down the suspect in Northwest D.C. With offices in Washington, Northern Virginia and Maryland, the multi-jurisdictional task force is typically called into action when suspects move through various jurisdictions in the greater metropolitan area. It is one of six regional task forces operated by the Marshals Service, which were established under the Presidential Threat Protection Act of 2000 to combine federal state and local law enforcement resources to apprehend dangerous fugitives and high-profile investigations.
"The task force has considerable resources behind it," said Steve Blando, public information officer for US Marshall Service. "Basically, they have everything available from local, state and federal law enforcement agencies."
According to Barry Boright, who was part of the team that led the pre-dawn raid of the Washington townhouse in the early morning hours of Aug. 10, Curtis was hiding at a girlfriend’s house. Members of the task force had identified several possible locations where the suspect might have been hiding, and had at least two addresses under surveillance. Boright said that his task force took about a week to track him down, interviewing ex-girlfriends, former employers and friends who were familiar with Curtis’ habits.
"Half of this job is going on hunches," said Boright. "We grabbed him just after first light."