2 found guilty in "brutal revenge killings" of man and woman kidnapped in D.C.
Two men have been convicted in a complex and deadly scheme that authorities described as "brutal revenge killings."
Ending a four-week criminal trial, a federal jury found 26-year-old Malique Lewis and 28-year-old Marcel Vines guilty in the armed kidnappings, and ensuing murders, of Armani Nico Coles and Kerrice Lewis in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 28, 2017. Malique Lewis and Kerrice Lewis are not related.
The U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C. announced the verdict for Lewis, who went by the name "Freak," and Vines, who went by "Baby Boy," on Monday and said that U.S. District Court Judge Dabney L. Friedrich would schedule sentencing for both men in the coming days. Each faces two mandatory minimum sentences of life imprisonment, to be served consecutively, according to the office.
Prosecutors argued during the trial that Lewis and Vines, while conspiring with a third co-defendant — Ashton Briscoe, who wasn't paired with the other two men in court proceedings after 2022 — forged a plan to kidnap and kill the two victims "out of a desire for revenge." Their motivation, authorities said, was the death of their friend, Ronzay Green, who was fatally shot earlier in the day by a friend of the victims.
According to the prosecution, Lewis and Vines were aware of who Green's killer was, to the extent they went looking for the man in his own neighborhood. When they arrived, authorities say Lewis and Vines spotted one of the victims and identified her as a friend of the man who shot Green. They followed her to an AutoZone in the area and, in the parking lot of the shop, held the victim at gunpoint with a .45- caliber assault rifle and kidnapped her, forcing her into the backseat of her vehicle as they drove it across the city. At that point, Lewis and Vines aimed to use the victim as bait to lure the man who killed their friend.
That plan didn't work, prosecutors said, so they instead used the victim's phone to lure Coles, a friend of hers as well as the man responsible for Green's death, to another location nearby. Although Lewis and Vines apparently believed that Coles could lead them to Green's killer, they ultimately kidnapped Coles that evening, moving the first victim into the trunk of her car and the second into the backseat.
Coles remained in the car for a brief period, authorities said. While Lewis and Vines were routing back to their own D.C. neighborhood, Clay Terrace, they became caught in traffic on the highway in Maryland. Lewis and Vines then shot Coles multiple times and pushed him from the backseat of the car onto the highway. Prosecutors said the defendants left him there and fled the scene back to D.C.
Roughly an hour after that, Lewis and Vines drove the other victim's car into an alley near the city's Fort Circle Park. Prosecutors said they shot her at least 13 times before setting her car on fire and abandoning it, while her body was still inside.
The U.S. Attorney said authorities were able to build a case against the two men by matching the guns used to kill each victim, and by matching fingerprints found on an item that was pushed from the victim's car to other fingerprints found on Coles' body. Lewis was also seen on a surveillance camera behind the wheel of Coles' car at a McDonald's drive-through, one night after the murders, and had shortly after killing the victims boasted to people over text about his involvement in the killings.
"Shortly after the murders, Lewis also made statements, via text, bragging about them by sending news articles and saying, 'we ain't done,'" the U.S. Attorney's office said.
Lewis and Vines were arrested weeks after the murders, on Jan. 5, 2018, for unrelated charges. They have both been in custody since then, with Lewis indicted for Coles' murder around the time of the arrest and both charged in D.C. Superior Court for the two murders in August of that year. Their case was taken to federal court the following May. Both had pleaded not guilty to the charges brought against them, including those for kidnapping and murder.
