Local
Family calls for hate crime probe in Betts murder case
One defendant sentenced to 40 years; another pleads guilty
Jennifer Altomare, sister of murder victim Brian Betts, with attorney Gloria Allred. (Blade photo by Michael Key)
Speaking through an attorney known for taking on high-profile celebrity cases, the family of gay D.C. middle school principal Brian Betts Tuesday called on the U.S. Justice Department to investigate whether Betts’ murder in April was motivated by anti-gay bias.
Los Angeles attorney Gloria Allred, who has been retained by Betts’ parents, discussed the possible hate crime angle to the case during a news conference at a courthouse in Rockville, Md., minutes after a judge sentenced defendant Alante Saunders, 19, to 40 years in jail for Betts’ murder.
Betts was found shot to death April 15 in the second floor bedroom of his Silver Spring, Md., house. Saunders and three other teenage males were charged with murder in connection with the case a short time later.
Authorities said Saunders met Betts through a sex chat line and hatched a plan with the other three youths to commit a robbery. Defense attorneys and prosecutors said the youths did not intend to kill Betts and attributed the shooting to a “robbery that went bad.”
Police identified Saunders as the shooter.
“Brian’s family retained me to represent them as victims in the criminal case,” said Allred, who has hosted a radio talk show specializing in legal issues.
“The family has also retained me to explore whether or not Brian’s murder should also be prosecuted under the new Matthew Shepard federal hate crimes law,” she said.
“Brian was a gay man and we believe an investigation should be opened under that law to determine whether a hate crime has or has not been committed by defendant Saunders and if it has whether it is appropriate to proceed with a federal prosecution under that law.”
Police and prosecutors said an investigation found that Saunders and Betts met through a sex chat line and that Betts invited Saunders, who expressed an interest in seeing him, to his house. Sources familiar with the case have said the chat line caters to gay men seeking other men for sex, but authorities have declined to identify the chat line by name.
Saunders pleaded guilty last month to first-degree felony murder in connection with the case. As part of a plea bargain arrangement, prosecutors agreed to ask Montgomery County District Court Judge John Debelius to sentence Saunders to life in prison with all but 40 years suspended.
Debelius agreed to the request at a sentencing hearing Tuesday following emotional statements delivered by nine family members and friends of Betts, including Betts’ mother, Doris Betts, his father, Delbert Betts, and sister, Jennifer Altomare. Nearly all of them wept as they described Betts, 42, as an extraordinary educator, mentor, loyal family member and friend.
“When I received word that our son had been killed in his own home, my world crumpled around me,” said Doris Betts. “These were supposed to be the golden years for me, but instead they will be the saddest years of my life.”
The judge also agreed to a request by defense attorney David Felsen that he recommend that Saunders be placed in a special state correctional facility that provides vocational training.
Debelius noted that under Maryland law, Saunders is eligible to apply for parole after serving 20 years.
Earlier in the day on Tuesday, the second of the three other men charged in Betts’ murder, Sharif Lancaster, 19, pleaded guilty to robbery and use of a handgun during commission of a felony as part of a plea bargain offered by prosecutors. Prosecutors agreed to drop an initial charge of first-degree felony murder against Lancaster.
He is scheduled to be sentenced Feb. 11 and faces a possible maximum sentence of 35 years in prison.
The Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s office and defense attorneys have said discussions were underway to arrange plea bargains for the remaining two defendants, Joel Johnson, 19, and Deontra Gray, 18.
Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy told reporters at the courthouse that his office investigated the possibility that Betts’ murder was a hate crime and could not find evidence to substantiate a bias related motive to the case.
“If we had seen evidence of a hate crime, we would have charged it,” he said. “And we have an advantage. We’ve seen the evidence.”
Gay rights attorneys have said state and local prosecutors sometimes don’t recognize the nuances of evidence that others might interpret as bias related elements of cases involving gay victims. They note that the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act gives federal prosecutors through the Justice Department authority to overrule local prosecutors and initiate a federal hate crimes charge if supported by a federal probe.
At her courthouse news conference Allred declined to disclose evidence she knows of to support a hate crime, saying it would be improper to discuss evidence until the cases of all of the four defendants are completed.
Some gay activists have speculated that a bias or hate related element might be present in the case if the defendants selected the chat line to specifically target a gay man for a crime.
McCarthy and other prosecutors with the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s office have refused so far to disclose specific details about what Sanders said to Betts through the chat line and the events that led to his firing the gun he used to shoot Betts.
Virginia
McPike wins special election for Va. House of Delegates
Gay Alexandria City Council member becomes 8th LGBTQ member of legislature
Gay Alexandria City Council member Kirk McPike emerged as the decisive winner in a Feb. 10 special election for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates representing Alexandria.
McPike, a Democrat, received 81.5 percent of the vote in his race against Republican Mason Butler, according to the local publication ALX Now.
He first won election to the Alexandria Council in 2021. He will be filling the House of Delegates seat being vacated by Del. Elizabeth Bennett-Parker (D-Alexandria), who won in another Feb. 10 special election for the Virginia State Senate seat being vacated by gay Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria).
Ebbin is resigning from his Senate this week to take a position with Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger’s administration.
Upon taking his 5th District seat in the House of Delegate, McPike will become the eighth out LGBTQ member of the Virginia General Assembly. Among those he will be joining is Sen. Danica Roem (D-Manassas), who became the Virginia Legislature’s first transgender member when she won election to the House of Delegates in 2017 before being elected to the Senate in 2023.
“I look forward to continuing to work to address our housing crisis, the challenge of climate change, and the damaging impacts of the Trump administration on the immigrant families, LGBTQ+ Virginians, and federal employees who call Alexandria home,” McPike said in a statement after winning the Democratic nomination for the seat in a special primary held on Jan. 20.
McPike, a longtime LGBTQ rights advocate, has served for the past 13 years as chief of staff for gay U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) and has remained in that position during his tenure on the Alexandria Council. He said he will resign from that position before taking office in the House of Delegates.
Local
Local LGBTQ groups, activists to commemorate Black History Month
Rayceen Pendarvis to moderate Dupont Underground panel on Sunday
LGBTQ groups in D.C. and elsewhere plan to use Black History Month as an opportunity to commemorate and celebrate Black lives and experiences.
Team Rayceen Productions has no specific events planned, but co-founder Rayceen Pendarvis will attend many functions around D.C. this month.
Pendarvis, a longtime voice in the LGBTQ community in D.C. moderated a panel at Dupont Underground on Feb. 8. The event, “Every (Body) Wants to Be a Showgirl,” will feature art from Black burlesque artists from around the country. Pendarvis on Feb. 23 will attend the showing of multimedia play at the Lincoln Theatre that commemorates the life of James Baldwin.
Equality Virginia plans to prioritize Black voices through a weekly online series, and community-based story telling. The online digital series will center Black LGBTQ voices, specifically trailblazers and activists, and contemporary Black queer and transgender people.
Narissa Rahaman, Equality Virginia’s executive director, stressed the importance of the Black queer community to the overall Pride movement, and said “Equality Virginia is proud to center those voices in our work this month and beyond.”
The Capital Pride Alliance, which hosts Pride events in D.C., has an alliance with the Center for Black Equity, which brings Black Pride to D.C. over Memorial Day weekend. The National LGBTQ Task Force has no specific Black History Month events planned, but plans to participate in online collaborations.
Cathy Renna, the Task Force’s director of communications, told the Washington Blade the organization remains committed to uplifting Black voices. “Our priority is keeping this at the forefront everyday,” she said.
The D.C. LGBTQ+ Community Center is also hosting a series of Black History Month events.
The D.C. Public Library earlier this year launched “Freedom and Resistance,” an exhibition that celebrates Black History Month and Martin Luther King Jr. It will remain on display until the middle of March at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library at 901 G St., N.W.
District of Columbia
U.S. Attorney’s Office drops hate crime charge in anti-gay assault
Case remains under investigation and ‘further charges’ could come
D.C. police announced on Feb. 9 that they had arrested two days earlier on Feb. 7 a Germantown, Md., man on a charge of simple assault with a hate crime designation after the man allegedly assaulted a gay man at 14th and Q Streets, N.W., while using “homophobic slurs.”
But D.C. Superior Court records show that prosecutors with the Office of the U.S. Attorney for D.C., which prosecutes D.C. violent crime cases, charged the arrested man only with simple assault without a hate crime designation.
In response to a request by the Washington Blade for the reason why the hate crime designation was dropped, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s office provided this response: “We continue to investigate this matter and make no mistake: should the evidence call for further charges, we will not hesitate to charge them.”
In a statement announcing the arrest in this case, D.C. police stated, “On Saturday, February 7, 2026, at approximately 7:45 p.m. the victim and suspect were in the 1500 block of 14th Street, Northwest. The suspect requested a ‘high five’ from the victim. The victim declined and continued walking,” the statement says.
“The suspect assaulted the victim and used homophobic slurs,” the police statement continues. “The suspect was apprehended by responding officers.”
It adds that 26-year-old Dean Edmundson of Germantown, Md. “was arrested and charged with Simple Assault (Hate/Bias).” The statement also adds, “A designation as a hate crime by MPD does not mean that prosecutors will prosecute it as a hate crime.”
Under D.C.’s Bias Related Crime Act of 1989, penalties for crimes motivated by prejudice against individuals based on race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, and homelessness can be enhanced by a court upon conviction by one and a half times greater than the penalty of the underlying crime.
Prosecutors in the past both in D.C. and other states have said they sometimes decide not to include a hate crime designation in assault cases if they don’t think the evidence is sufficient to obtain a conviction by a jury. In some instances, prosecutors have said they were concerned that a skeptical jury might decide to find a defendant not guilty of the underlying assault charge if they did not believe a motive of hate was involved.
A more detailed arrest affidavit filed by D.C. police in Superior Court appears to support the charge of a hate crime designation.
“The victim stated that they refused to High-Five Defendant Edmondson, which, upon that happening, Defendant Edmondson started walking behind both the victim and witness, calling the victim, “bald, ugly, and gay,” the arrest affidavit states.
“The victim stated that upon being called that, Defendant Edmundson pushed the victim with both hands, shoving them, causing the victim to feel the force of the push,” the affidavit continues. “The victim stated that they felt offended and that they were also gay,” it says.
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