Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives

WASHINGTON – Demetrius Green, 33, of Washington, D.C., was sentenced today to 84 months in prison for gun and drug charges, announced U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves, Special Agent in Charge is Craig B. Kailimai, and Interim Chief Ashan Benedict, of the Metropolitan Police Department.

Green was convicted, on December 14, 2022, after a one-week jury trial, of unlawful possession of a firearm and ammunition by a prohibited person (previous conviction for a term of imprisonment exceeding one year) and three counts of unlawful possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance (including crack cocaine, hydromorphone, and oxycodone).

According to the evidence, on January 20, 2020, at approximately 4:45 a.m., Green, a twice convicted felon, stepped onto the back porch of 917 Wahler Place, Southeast, in Washington, D.C., and fired a machinegun into the air. The Metropolitan Police Department (“MPD”) quickly responded and knocked on both the back and front door, but the individual inside refused to come out. MPD officers gathered the spent shell casings from the back porch and obtained pole camera footage from a camera that had been installed days earlier to monitor suspected drug trafficking and violence in the area. The pole camera captured Green stepping onto the back porch and firing off a weapon at 4:45 a.m, and then stepping onto the same back porch on at least two occasions later that morning. After reviewing this footage, law enforcement returned that evening with a search warrant.

As the warrant was executed, Green attempted to run out the back door, but was stopped and arrested. From inside the residence, MPD and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (“ATF”) recovered approximately $30,000 of drugs (including 33 zips of crack cocaine, 288 hydromorphone pills, and 700 oxycodone pills), drug paraphernalia, and a machinegun that forensically matched the five spent shell casings that MPD had recovered from the back porch. Green was the only individual inside the residence. Several of Green’s ID cards were found merely feet away from the crack and the machinegun, and Green appeared to be the only person living in what the Government’s expert witness testified was a quintessential “stash house,” where controlled substances were stored in order to be sold to the public.

In announcing the sentence, U.S. Attorney Graves, Special Agent in Charge Kailimai, and Interim Chief Benedict commended the work of the detectives and patrol officers of the Metropolitan Police Department’s Seventh District, and agents and experts from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). They also expressed appreciation to those who prosecuted the case Assistant U.S. Attorneys David T. Henek from the office’s Violence Reduction and Trafficking offenses section and Gilead Light from the Federal Major Crimes section.