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Anti-Violence Worker Charged With Second-Degree Murder in D.C.

Cotey Wynn supervises a team of violence interruptors in one of D.C’s most dangerous neighborhoods. Now, he’s charged in the shooting death of a 53-year-old man.

Cotey Wynn has worked as a contractor with the Washington, D.C. based violence interruption program Cure the Streets for two years, supervising a team of six. But on Friday, he was charged with second-degree murder for the 2017 shooting of 53-year-old Eric Linnair Wright, the Washington Post reports. The shooting occurred just outside Trinidad, one of the District’s most dangerous districts, where Wynn grew up and now works. Wynn’s first appearance in D.C. Superior Court could occur as early as Saturday.

A spokeswoman for the D.C. Attorney General’s office, which runs Cure the Streets, said that Wynn works for National Association for the Advancement of Returning Citizens, which works with the program as a contractor. A statement from the office said that the shooting occurred before Wynn’s involvement with the organization, which first began in 2018.