Local
Gay man murdered in D.C. apartment
Police say surveillance camera captured ‘person of interest’
D.C. Police Capt. Michael Farish said Delando King was found unconscious and stabbed in his apartment shortly after 6 p.m. Monday. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
A 34-year-old gay man who was found stabbed to death in his D.C. apartment Monday night was last seen by friends leaving a gay bar over the weekend, said the city police homicide squad’s supervisor.
Capt. Michael Farish told reporters at a news briefing Tuesday that police discovered the victim, Delando King, unconscious and suffering from stab wounds in his apartment along the 1100 block of 10th Street, N.W., shortly after 6 p.m. Monday.
A separate police statement said police and a D.C. Fire & Emergency Medical Services crew rushed to the scene in response to an emergency call.
“Upon arriving on the scene they discovered a male victim unresponsive and suffering from apparent stab wounds; he was subsequently pronounced dead,” said the statement.
Farish confirmed the location as an apartment in a high-rise building at 1117 10th Street, N.W.
A surveillance camera at the building captured video footage of King entering the building with an unidentified male guest, Farish said. He noted the surveillance video also shows the unidentified man leaving the building a short time later carrying a bag that he did not have when he entered the building with King.
He said police planned to release photo images of the unidentified man taken from the video. Farish described the unidentified man as a “person of interest” rather than a suspect until investigators gather more information about the circumstances surrounding the case.
“We know two of the clubs [the victim] was at,” said Farish. “We’re looking for the public’s assistance if they saw him in another club.”
According to Farish, King was out with friends at the two clubs police have identified.
“They were able to give us a timeline as to when he left,” he said. “It’s after 12:30 Sunday morning where it becomes a little sketchy as to where he was and where he may have met somebody else. So if anyone knows Mr. King or if he was a regular anywhere, we’re definitely looking for the public’s assistance in identifying that, especially if they saw him in the company of anybody.”
Farish declined to identify the clubs that King patronized with friends in the hours before his death, saying investigators would rather have members of the community come forward with the names of places King may have visited that investigators don’t know about.
But one source familiar with the case said King had patronized the gay club Fuego on Friday night and early Saturday morning. Fuego, which caters to the LGBT Latino community, operates only on Friday nights and rents space at a non-gay club at 1818 New York Ave., N.E.
The owner of the Fuego nightclub venue could not be immediately reached.
King’s death comes one week after D.C. police released an alert to the LGBT community noting that five separate attacks against men are being investigated. All five attacks occurred in the city between June 2 and July 30 and are believed to be motivated by anti-gay bias.
The alert said that while police were examining the cases for possible similarities, they had yet to confirm whether they cases were related or whether any two or more of the assaults were committed by the same perpetrators.
Farish said homicide detectives investigating King’s murder were aware of the separate incidents, but don’t believe they are linked to King’s death.
“What we’re dealing with in this incident has no indication of being related to those incidents,” he said.
King worked for the federal government as an employee of the U.S. Indian Health Service, which is an arm of the Department of Health & Human Services.
“We at the Indian Health Service are very saddened to learn of the death of our colleague Dalando King, who was a member of the Navajo Nation,” the IHS said in a statement released Tuesday.
“Mr. King was a dedicated employee and a friend to many in the Washington area American Indian community. We extend our deep condolences to Mr. King’s family,” the statement says.
District of Columbia
Mayor Bowser signs bill requiring insurers to cover PrEP
‘This is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS’
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on March 20 signed a bill approved by the D.C. Council that requires health insurance companies to cover the costs of HIV prevention or PrEP drugs for D.C. residents at risk for HIV infection.
Like all legislation approved by the Council and signed by the mayor, the bill, called the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act, was sent to Capitol Hill for a required 30-day congressional review period before it takes effect as D.C. law.
Gay D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) last year introduced the bill.
Insurance coverage for PrEP drugs has been provided through coverage standards included in the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. But AIDS advocacy organizations have called on states and D.C. to pass their own legislation requiring insurance coverage of PrEP as a safeguard in case federal policies are weakened or removed by the Trump administration, which has already reduced federal funding for HIV/AIDS-related programs.
Like legislation passed by other states, the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act requires insurers to cover all PrEP drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Studies have shown that PrEP drugs, which can be taken as pills or by injection just twice a year, are highly effective in preventing HIV infection.
“I think this is a win for our community,” Parker said after the D.C. Council voted unanimously to approve the bill on its first vote on the measure in February. “And this is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS.”
District of Columbia
Blade editor to be inducted into D.C. Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame
Kevin Naff marks 24 years with publication this year
Longtime Washington Blade Editor Kevin Naff will be inducted into D.C.’s Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame in June, the group announced this week.
Hall of Fame honorees are chosen by the Society of Professional Journalists’ Washington, D.C., Pro Chapter. Naff and two other inductees — Seth Borenstein, a Washington-based national science writer for the AP and Cheryl W. Thompson, an award-winning correspondent for National Public Radio — will be celebrated at the chapter’s Dateline Awards dinner on Tuesday, June 9, at the National Press Club. The dinner’s emcee will be Kojo Nnamdi, host of WAMU radio’s weekly “Politics Hour.”
“I am tremendously honored by this recognition,” Naff said. “I have spent a lifetime in the D.C. area learning from so many talented journalists and am humbled to be considered in their company. Thank you to SPJ and to all the LGBTQ pioneers who came before me who made this possible.”
Naff joined the Blade in 2002 after years in print and digital journalism. He worked as a financial reporter for Reuters in New York before moving to Baltimore in 1996 to launch the Baltimore Sun’s website. He spent four years at the Sun before leaving for an internet startup and later joining the mobile data group at Verizon Wireless working on the first generation of mobile apps.
He then moved to the Blade and has served as the publication’s longest-tenured editor. In 2023, Naff published his first book, “How We Won the War for LGBTQ Equality — And How Our Enemies Could Take It All Away.”
Previous Hall of Fame inductees include luminaries in journalism like Wolf Blitzer, Benjamin Bradlee, Bob Woodward, Andrea Mitchell, and Edgar Allen Poe. The Blade’s senior news reporter Lou Chibbaro Jr. was inducted in 2015.
Maryland
Supreme Court ruling against conversion therapy bans could affect Md. law
Then-Gov. Larry Hogan signed statute in 2018
By PAMELA WOOD, JOHN-JOHN WILLIAMS IV, and MADELEINE O’NEILL | The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against a law banning “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ kids in Colorado, a ruling that also could apply to Maryland’s ban on the discredited practice.
An 8-1 high court majority sided with a Christian counselor who argues the law banning talk therapy violates the First Amendment. The justices agreed that the law raises free speech concerns and sent it back to a lower court to decide whether it meets a legal standard that few laws pass.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the court’s majority, said the law “censors speech based on viewpoint.” The First Amendment, he wrote, “stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
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