District of Columbia
Defendant pleads guilty to second-degree murder in Vongell Lugo case
Victim’s family, friends upset over proposed 14–16-year sentence
A man charged with premeditated first-degree murder while armed for the Jan. 6, 2019, murder of gay corporate manager Vongell Lugo pleaded guilty in D.C. Superior Court on Feb. 3 to a single count of second-degree murder while armed as part of a plea bargain deal offered by prosecutors.
As part of the plea offer, prosecutors with the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia agreed to drop the first-degree murder charge against Collin J. Potter. The agreement also calls for prosecutors to ask Superior Court Judge Marisa Demeo, who’s presiding over the case, to hand down a sentence of between 14 and 16 years of incarceration.
Under D.C. law, second-degree murder carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison. Demeo scheduled a sentencing hearing for April 14.
Potter’s guilty plea came just over two weeks after Demeo on Jan. 23 approved a motion filed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Peter V. Roman, the lead prosecutor in the case, calling for dismissing four of the five counts in a grand jury indictment against Potter handed down in August 2019. The counts that were dismissed included two counts of felony murder while armed (aggravating circumstances,) kidnapping while armed and first-degree sexual assault while armed.
Roman’s motion called for leaving in place the fifth count of the grand jury indictment: First degree murder while armed (premeditated) (aggravating circumstances.)
Court records show that Demeo dismissed that charge as part of the plea agreement after Potter pleaded guilty on Feb. 3 to second-degree murder while armed. The three-page plea agreement filed in court also states that second-degree murder while armed carries a maximum sentence of 30 years of incarceration under the D.C. criminal code and the judge would make the final decision on a sentence for Potter.
Two longtime friends of Lugo, Hannah Davis Hastings and Juliana Geller, who said they were representing Lugo’s family, spoke briefly at the Feb. 3 court hearing at the invitation of Roman.
The two women told Demeo, who agreed to allow them to speak, that they and the Lugo family strongly object to the recommendation that Potter be sentenced to a range of 14 to 16 years, saying a just and fair sentence should be significantly greater. Demeo told the two women they and others will be given an opportunity to speak and express their concerns at the April 14 sentencing hearing.
At the time of his arrest in January 2019, Potter, then 26, was serving as a U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman. He has been held in jail since the time of his arrest and during the more than four years that the case has gone on while Potter was awaiting a trial.
In addition to agreeing to the plea bargain offer, Potter agreed to and signed a one-page Proffer of Facts submitted by prosecutors that states in detail the allegations against Potter that it says would have been proven beyond a reasonable doubt had the case gone to trial.
The proffer begins by telling what happened after police and prosecutors say Lugo and Potter met, possibly for the first time, at the Black Whiskey bar at 1410 14th St., N.W., on the night of the murder, at which time Lugo, 36, invited Potter to Lugo’s apartment in Northwest D.C.
“On Sunday, Jan. 6, 2019, at approximately 4:00 a.m., the defendant and the decedent, Vongell Lugo, were alone together in Mr. Lugo’s apartment,” the proffer states. “The defendant, unprovoked, attacked Mr. Lugo,” it says.
“The defendant grabbed one of Mr. Lugo’s kitchen knives from Mr. Lugo’s kitchen and stabbed Mr. Lugo 42 times in the head, neck, and torso, killing Mr. Lugo,” the proffer continues. “According to the autopsy, the defendant, at some point, also punched Mr. Lugo in the face. Mr. Lugo never fought back, beyond yelling for help,” the proffer says, adding that two neighbors heard the calls for help and called 911.
“The defendant then attempted to clean the knife in the kitchen sink,” it states. “Around 4:20 a.m. the defendant pulled Mr. Lugo’s naked body out into the hallway, where Mr. Lugo’s body was found and the defendant was discovered by MPD officers, standing naked, uninjured and covered in Mr. Lugo’s blood.”
Court records show that Potter was arrested on the scene and initially charged with second degree murder while armed. The court records show that prosecutors a short time later offered a plea bargain deal, which Potter through his attorney rejected, calling for Potter to plead guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for the government not seeking a grand jury indictment on first-degree murder and other charges.
The grand jury then handed down its five-count indictment in August 2019 that included the first-degree and felony murder charges along with the sexual assault and kidnapping charges. For reasons not provided in the public court records, the case dragged on for the next four years until a trial was scheduled to take place April 18, 2023.
The U.S. Attorney’s office has declined to provide a reason why it decided for the second time to offer the plea agreement for second-degree murder rather than bring the case to trial on the charges included in the indictment.
“They just said this is a better way to do this,” Hastings, Lugo’s friend, told the Washington Blade after the Feb. 3 court hearing. “I don’t think there is anything more we can share on this,” she said.
Attorneys familiar with criminal cases like this one have said prosecutors sometimes offer plea deals when they are not certain they can obtain a conviction on first-degree murder in a trial by jury. In some cases, when the defense establishes a “reasonable doubt” in the minds of jurors, a verdict of not guilty has emerged in murder cases, lawyers have said.
Longtime D.C. defense attorney Mindy Daniels, who practices criminal law, said in the case of the Lugo murder, where there were no witnesses and the two men were in the apartment alone, the defense could have argued a number of claims that could have an impact on a jury, such as the defendant acted in self-defense after being attacked by the victim.
“Trials are unpredictable,” Daniels said. “When they can get a murder conviction without a trial, the government is often satisfied,” she said, noting that a second-degree murder conviction is still a murder conviction. “A jury might find the defendant guilty of second-degree murder at trial anyway,” Daniels said. “A plea is a guaranteed conviction.”
At the time of his death, Lugo had been working as an associate manager for TransPerfect, an international company that provides foreign language translation, interpretation and business services. Friends of Lugo have said that prior to joining TransPerfect in 2016, he worked as a manger in the men’s clothing department at the D.C. area retail stores J Crew, Bloomingdale’s, and the Gap beginning in 2003.
“Everyone who met him became his friend for life,” said one friend who was among more than 80 people, including co-workers, friends and family members, who attended a Jan. 11, 2019, candlelight vigil celebrating Lugo’s life. “Vongell was a beloved son, brother, uncle and coworker” who was a “kind soul, the center of the party, and a beacon of light that made an impact on everyone he came into contact with,” another friend said at the vigil.
District of Columbia
Pride faith services in Washington, D.C.
Almost half of all LGBTQ adults in the U.S. are religious
Are you an LGBTQ person of faith or someone exploring spirituality? It is more common than people realize. According to a Williams Institute study published in October 2020, almost half of all LGBTQ adults in the United States are religious. This may seem counterintuitive as any LGBTQ people have complicated relationships with faith because of very real histories of abuse, trauma, and violence.
This violence still continues in the United States, especially following the Supreme Court’s March 2026 decision in Chiles v. Salazar, who ruled Colorado’s ban on conversion therapy for minors violates the First Amendment, but not everyone has encountered this violence, nor do people who have faced it, separate themselves completely from religion. Many people may seek out affirming faith traditions which are prevalent in the DMV area.
For individuals seeking out faith services during Pride 2026, please check out the list below, which will be updated as more events are publicized.
Memorial Service for SaVanna Wanzer
May 17th at 1 pm
Westminster Presbyterian Church (400 I St SW, Washington, DC 20024)
Westminster Presbyterian will host a celebration of life for legendary DC trans rights activist and founder of DC Trans Pride and Black Trans Pride SaVanna Wanzer who was a long-time member of the church. Live music will begin at 12:15 pm before the start of the memorial service. The service will be livestreamed on the Westminster DC Facebook page. A meal will follow the Sunday service.
There will also be a celebratory vigil held on Saturday, May 16th from 6:30-8 pm for friends and family at the church led by LGBTQ organizer Rayceen Pendarvis.
May 23th at 11 am
Downtown Westin (999 9th Street NW, Washington, DC 20001)
This intimate conversation is hosted by Janeé Lee, founder of Queer Ministry, between Black trans and queer people who are surviving religious trauma and navigating their relationship with the church. The workshop, hosted as part of Trans Pride DC, is a chance for people to share their stories at the intersection of queerness and spirituality and to walk away with a spiritual healing guide with affirming scriptures and inclusive theology.
DC Black Pride Worship Service
May 24th at 10 am
Remnant Christian Center (120 West Hampton Avenue, Capitol Heights, MD)
Hosted by The Community Church of Washington DC-UCC, this service will feature speakers and sessions on Black queer faith and unity, including host and speaker Robert D. Wise Jr. for a powerful Pentecost Unity Service. Attendees are encouraged to come dressed in and white.
June 5th at 7 pm
Sixth & I (600 I Street, NW, Washington, DC 20001)
Join Rabbi Jenna will be leading an inclusive, musical service celebrating the diversity of Jewish life in Washington, DC. Happy Hour, which is limited to people 21 and older, will start at 6 pm. The service will start at 7 pm, with dinner at 8:15 pm. The service is free but registration is required, and the kosher-style pescatarian meal does cost money. Register online here.
June 14th at 5 pm
Black Cat (1811 14th St NW, Washington, DC 20009)
Muslim Pride is a community-led and funded grassroots performance series centering queer and trans Muslim artists through music, drag and dance. The series was originally founded in 2020 as a way to create affirming spaces where faith, culture, and queerness can coexist. This year’s series features Mercedes Iman Diamond. This year, Muslim Pride expands to Washington, DC, New York City, and Los Angeles. Buy tickets here.
Pride Celebrations and Sunday Worship Service
June 14th all day
Riverside Baptist Church (699 Maine Avenue SW, Washington, DC 20024)
Join Riverside Baptist Church for a day-long Pride celebration beginning with Pride Weekend/Musical Theater Sunday worship service at 10 am. Later that morning and early afternoon, from 11:30 am to 1:30 pm, the church will be hosting a Pride Pageant, a technicolor celebration featuring a runway showcase, line dancing, food, and refreshments.
June 22nd at 7 pm
St. Mark’s Episocpal Church (301 A Street, SE, Washington, DC 20003)
Join this interfaith service celebrating affirming faith traditions and intertradition dialogue hosted by queer and trans faith leaders. The interfaith service has been hosted annually for over 40 years, and first began back in the 1980s with faith leaders and queer people of faith coming together to mourn and pray at the site of the AIDS Memorial Quilt on the National Mall. Learn more about the history of the interfaith service here.
June 23rd at 6 pm
Holy Trinity Catholic Church (3513 N St NW, Washington, DC 20007)
Holy Trinity will be hosting its 6th annual Pride Mass. After its debut this past summer, the Pride Mass choir will be singing at the Pride Mass in June, and following the Mass, there will be an annual reception with ice cream and other goodies. Learn more about attending the reception and Holy Trinity’s LGBTQ+ Ministry.
District of Columbia
GLAA releases ratings for 18 candidates running for D.C. mayor, Council, AG
Mayoral contender Janeese Lewis Geroge among those receiving highest score
D.C. mayoral candidate Janeese Lewis George, a Democrat, is among just four candidates to receive the highest rating score of +10 from GLAA D.C. who are competing in the city’s June 16 primary election.
GLAA, formally known as the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance of Washington, has rated candidates for public office in D.C. since the 1970s. It rated 18 of the 36 candidates on this year’s primary ballot for mayor, D.C. Council, and D.C. attorney general based on its policy of only rating candidates who return a GLAA questionnaire asking for their positions on a wide range of issues, most of which are not LGBTQ-specific.
Among the candidates who did not return the questionnaire and thus did not receive a rating, according to GLAA, was Democratic mayoral contender Kenyan McDuffie, who along with Lewis George, is considered by political observers to be one of the two leading mayoral candidates running in the Democratic primary.
GLAA President Benjamin Brooks said that when the McDuffie campaign learned that GLAA announced it had released its candidate ratings and McDuffie was not rated because a questionnaire from him was not received a McDuffie campaign worker contacted GLAA. Brooks said the campaign worker told him they didn’t initially believe they received the questionnaire but they discovered this week that it landed in the spam folder of the campaign’s email account.
Brooks told the Washington Blade he informed the campaign worker it was too late for GLAA to issue a rating for McDuffie since the submission deadline for all candidates had passed. But he said GLAA will allow McDuffie to submit a completed questionnaire that it will post on its website along with the questionnaire responses of the other candidates who submitted them to GLAA.
McDuffie’s campaign in a statement to the Blade said the GLAA questionnaire “had gone to a spam folder tied to a campaign email address and was never seen by the campaign.”
“Kenyan McDuffie has long been proud of his record of standing with DC’s LGBTQ+ community,” reads the statement. “He has completed the GLAA questionnaire in every election since his first campaign and, in 2022, earned one of the top two ratings among candidates for the two at-large Council seats that election cycle.”
“Kenyan remains committed to fighting for equality, dignity, safety, and opportunity for LGBTQ+ residents across all eight wards, and our campaign welcomes the opportunity to continue engaging with GLAA and the LGBTQ+ community throughout this race,” it continues.
Lewis George and McDuffie, who each have long records of support for the LGBTQ community, are among a total of eight candidates running for mayor on the June 16 primary ballot: seven Democrats and one Statehood Green Party candidate. In addition to Lewis George, GLAA rated just two other mayoral candidates. Rini Sampath, a Democrat who self identifies as queer, received a +6.5 rating, and Ernest E. Johnson, also a Democrat, received a +4.5 rating
Under the GLAA rating system, candidate ratings range from a +10, the highest score, to a -10, the lowest possible score. In its ratings for the June 16 primary, the lowest score issued was +4.5. GLAA said in a statement that each of the 18 candidates it rated expressed strong support for LGBTQ-related issues in their questionnaire responses, indicating that the overall rating scores reflect the candidates’ positions on mostly non-LGBTQ-specific issues.
The three other candidates who received a +10 GLAA rating are each running as Democrats for the Ward 1 D.C. Council seat. They include gay candidate Miguel Trindade Deramo; Aparna Raj, who identifies as bisexual; and LGBTQ ally Rashida Brown. The only other Ward 1 candidate rated by GLAA is LGBTQ ally Terry Lynch, who received a +5.5 rating.
Ward 5 D.C. Councilmember Zachary Parker, the Council’s only gay member who is facing two opponents in the Democratic primary, received a +7 GLAA rating. The two challengers did not return the questionnaire and were not rated.
“In seven out of 10 of our priorities, every candidate indicated agreement,” GLAA said in its statement to the Washington Blade in referring to the candidates it rated. “Total consensus on core issues signals that whomever is elected to Council and mayor, we should expect to hold our elected officials accountable to our goals of protecting home rule, resisting federal overreach, advancing transgender healthcare rights, and eliminating chronic homelessness in the District,” the statement says.
“While candidates agree on the basics, they distinguish themselves in the depth and creativity in their responses, and their record on the issues,” according to the statement, which adds that candidates’ full questionnaire responses and ratings can be accessed on the GLAA website, glaa.org.
Like past election years, GLAA does not rate candidates running for the D.C. Congressional Delegate seat or the so-called “shadow” U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate seats.
With the exception of one question asking about transgender rights, none of the other nine of the 10 questionnaire questions are LGBTQ-specific. But most of the questions mention that LGBTQ people are impacted by the issues being raised, such as affordable housing, federal government intrusion into D.C. home rule, and access to healthcare and public benefits for low-income residents.
One of the questions asks candidates if they support decriminalization of sex work in D.C. among consenting adults, which GLAA supports. Lewis George is among the candidates who said they do not support sex work decriminalization at this time. The other two mayoral candidates that GLAA rated, Sampath and Johnson, said they support sex work decriminalization.
In the race for D.C. attorney general, GLAA issued a rating for just one of the three candidates running: Republican challenger Manuel Rivera, who received a +4.5 rating. Incumbent Democrat Brian Schwalb and Democratic challenger J.P. Szymkowicz were not rated because they didn’t return the questionnaire.
D.C. Council Chair Phil Mendelson (D), who is running unopposed in the primary, received a +6.5 rating. Ward 6 Councilmember Charles Allen, who is facing three Democratic challengers in the primary and who is a longtime LGBTQ ally, received a +6.5 rating.
In the special election to fill the at-large D.C. Council seat vacated by the resignation of then-Independent Councilmember McDuffie to enable him to run for mayor as a Democrat, GLAA has rated two of the three Independent candidates competing for the seat. Elissa Silverman received a +5.75 rating, and Doni Crawford received a +6.5 rating.
Finally, in the At-Large D.C. Council race GLAA issued ratings for five of the 11 candidates running in the primary, each of whom are Democrats. Oye Owolewa received a +9; Lisa Raymond, +7.5; Dwight Davis, +6.5; Dyana N.M. Forester, +6; and Fred Hill, +6.6.
The full list of GLAA-rated candidates and their detailed questionnaire responses can be accessed at glaa.org.
District of Columbia
Anti-LGBTQ violence prevention efforts highlighted at D.C. community fair
Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs organized May 8 event
Detailed advice on how LGBTQ people can avoid, defend themselves against, and prevent themselves and loved ones from becoming victims of violence, with a focus on domestic and intimate partner violence, was presented at a May 8 LGBTQIA+ Safety in Numbers Community Fair.
The event, organized by the D.C. Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs, included five workshop sessions and information tables set up by 14 LGBTQ-supportive organizations and D.C. government agencies or agency divisions, including the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department’s LGBT Liaison Unit and the D.C. LGBTQ+ Community Center.
Also playing a lead role in organizing the event was the D.C. LGBTQIA+ Violence Prevention and Response Team, or VPART, a coalition of D.C. officials and leaders of community-based organizations that work with the Office of LGBTQ Affairs.
The event was held in meeting space in the building where the Office of LGBTQ Affairs is located at 899 N. Capitol St., N.E.
The workshop topics included de-escalation training on healthy relationships, bystander intervention, self-defense training, violence prevention grants, and suicide prevention.
“This will be a public safety and violence prevention event where community partners will educate attendees on various methods of violence intervention and trauma-informed practices,” according to a statement released by the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs prior to the start of the event.
The statement adds, “We will have live demos, interactive games, and workshops focused on strategies for self-defense, protecting vulnerable communities, increasing access to mental health resources, providing tools for recognizing domestic violence/intimate partner violence signs in intimate relationships, and assistance for substance abuse.”
Sonya Joseph, associate director of engagement for the Office of LGBTQ Affairs, told the Washington Blade that studies have shown rates of domestic or intimate partner violence are higher in the LGBTQ community than in the community at large.
“Domestic violence and intimate partner violence are two very big prevalent issues in the LGBTQ community,” she said, adding that some of the workshops at the event would be providing “training on healthy relationships and how to recognize and prevent intimate partner violence and the signs of it.”
About 35 to 40 people attended the workshop sessions.
Experts specializing in violence impacting the LGBTQ community have said domestic violence refers to violence among people in domestic relationships that can include spouses but also siblings, parents, cousins, and other relatives. Intimate partner violence, according to the experts, refers to violence perpetuated by a partner in a romantic or dating relationship.
These D.C. based organizations or agencies that participated in the LGBTQIA+ Safety in Numbers event, and which can be contacted for assistance, include:
• Defend Yourself
• DC LGBTQ+ Community Center
• American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
• Joseph’s House
• Us Helping Us, People into Living, Inc.
• MCSR (formerly known as Men Can Stop Rape)
• MPD LGBT Liaison Unit
• Volunteer Legal Advocates
• DC SAFE
• Destination Tomorrow
• D.C. Office of Victims Services and Justice Grants
• Life Enhancement Services
• ONYX Therapy Group
• U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C.
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