A preliminary hearing has been continued until Friday in the case of an off-duty Metropolitan Police Department officer accused of drunkenly climbing onto the hood of a car and firing shots at the five people inside after an altercation with the group.
In D.C. Superior Court on Tuesday, attorney Harold Martin asked that the hearing on an assault-with-a-dangerous-weapon charge for his client, Kenneth D. Furr, be continued as he had just been retained in the case.
Officer Furr was arrested early Friday as officers responded to the 100 block of Pierce Street Northwest after hearing gunshots in the area. According to charging documents in the case, officers found him standing on top of the hood of a car pointing his gun at the windshield. On person was shot multiple times and taken to a hospital with not-life threatening injuries, police said. Two others, whom transgender-rights groups have identified as transgender women, were also injured, though police were still investigating how they sustained their injuries.
A breathalyzer test administered five hours after the incident registered Mr. Furr’s alcohol level at .15, nearly twice the legal limit. Several of the people in the car admitted to either drinking heavily or smoking marijuana earlier in the evening.
The incident began at about 4:40 a.m. when Officer Furr, a more than 20-year-veteran with MPD, got into a verbal altercation with a person inside a CVS, according to court documents. Both left the store, and as the person walked past Officer Furr’s parked car, the off-duty officer pulled his service weapon out of his glove box and pointed it at the person.
The group of people involved reported the incident to an off-duty MPD officer who was working security at the CVS. However, upon determining Officer Furr was also an off-duty MPD officer, the officer working security determined no further action needed to be taken, court documents state.
The group left the CVS but later spotted Officer Furr’s white Cadillac and decided to follow it, hoping to still be able to report the earlier incident.
Around 5:25 a.m., Officer Furr stopped his car, got out and pointed his gun at the car tailing him, court documents state. The cars collided, and the people inside the car told police Officer Furr yelled “I’m a kill all of you,” before he got onto the hood and began firing shots at the windshield.
Officer Furr’s family members who were at the courthouse Tuesday for his hearing declined to comment.
According to D.C. court records, Officer Furr faced a previous charge of driving while intoxicated in 2004. The charge was dropped after he was enrolled in a diversion program.
In the early 1990s, Officer Furr was involved in a fatal police-involved shooting. According to news reports at the time, Officer Furr had gone to investigate a report of a burglary and was attacked when he confronted a man near the apartment where the report was made. As the two men struggled for Mr. Furr’s gun, the gun went off twice, striking the man and killing him.
• Andrea Noble can be reached at anoble@washingtontimes.com.
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