How a sneaker left at a crime scene led to an arrest in a shooting

Washington Post

19-03-2025

The bullet and spent casing at the crime scene made sense. The suspected shooter, last seen running through Chevy Chase, Maryland, toward a Metro train station, probably left them. But what about the sneaker — a black, left-footed, size 7 Under Armour?
'It kind of had us scratching our heads,' Sgt. Wayne Nichols said this week.
Then one of his detectives began combing through surveillance video from the Friendship Heights Metro station that showed passengers at fare gates. Suddenly before him was a person wearing a black shoe on her right foot and a white sock on the other. 'It was immediately apparent,' Nichols said.
The sergeant's recollections, along with a detailed arrest warrant filed in Montgomery County District Court, tell a modern-day and decidedly violent Cinderella story, its crucial clue an abandoned shoe.
Fare data from the Metro station, police allege, offered detectives an exact time their suspect used a SmarTrip card, which they eventually traced back to Roniyah Thomas, 20, of District Heights.
She remained held at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility on Wednesday, accused of approaching a 19-year-old the night of Feb. 4 after he had just parked his 2023 Subaru. The suspect unsuccessfully demanded the car, fired one round into the victim's leg and ran away. Thomas was charged this month with attempted murder, attempted carjacking and three other counts, according to court filings.
Those charges, though, rest on an incomplete description of a masked assailant, according to an attorney who represented Thomas in court recently and asked that she be allowed release pending her trial.
'The connection is tenuous to this individual,' Assistant Public Defender Luke Swinney said. 'I think there are honest questions about identity in this case.'
He also noted that Thomas is in college and studying to be a nurse. Thomas spoke in court, saying she could be placed under house arrest. 'I work daily, school daily, I do have a daily life that does not contain any threat to society or a danger to the community,' she said.
Before the incident, Thomas appears to have had only limited contact with law enforcement. Last April, Metro Transit Police cited her for an alleged fare evasion, according to court records. The case was placed on inactive status, records show.
But the new case, if proved, has Thomas facing decades in prison. Police say the victim survived, but only after the bullet barely missed his femoral artery and his bleeding was slowed by arriving officers who applied a tourniquet.
'This case was insanely close to being a homicide,' Assistant State's Attorney Adrienne Ferrell said in court recently. 'This victim is alive by pure luck given where he was shot.'
It was six weeks ago, just before 7:45 p.m., when the victim — having driven from Virginia to see his girlfriend — pulled up outside her apartment building near the intersection of South Park Avenue and The Hills Plaza. The northwest corner of that crossing has a statue of a policeman, erected 25 years ago, whose outstretched arm reminds drivers to stop at crosswalks and pedestrians to stay alert. One block east is a stretch of high-end shops along Wisconsin Avenue, including Brooks Brothers and Tiffany & Co.
After the man got out of his car, police say, a person wearing dark clothes approached and pointed a gun at his face. 'Give me your keys,' she said, according to detectives.
The man instinctively tried to push the gun away and the suspect stepped back, fired and fled. Responding officers found the victim lying 'on the ground with a large amount of blood coming from his left thigh,' according to an affidavit investigators filed in court.
The victim described the shooter as a young male, his face covered by a mask, standing 5-foot-5 to 5-foot 7, police said. The victim was taken to Suburban Hospital.
Back at the scene, investigators found one spent casing, one live round and the left sneaker just under the passenger side of the Subaru, where the victim had been standing, court records show. They canvassed the area for surveillance video, finding footage that showed just before the shooting, a person dressed in black, walking toward the intersection of South Park Avenue and The Hills Plaza. Another camera nearby recorded the sound of single gunshot at 7:36 p.m. Subsequent video showed what appeared to be the same person running from the scene.
After the victim had recovered from surgery, detectives had a chance to ask him about the size 7 shoe they found. He said it wasn't his — he wears a size 8½ — but perhaps it belonged to his girlfriend and had fallen from the car when he opened his door, according to Nichols.
That the shoe had been left there by the shooter 'was only a theory at that point,' Nichols said.
But one of Nichols's detectives, Brian Dyer, was soon reviewing the surveillance video from the Metro station. He spotted a person missing a left shoe and passing through the fare gate just before 7:40 p.m. Once on the other side, 'the subject removes their other shoe and places it in a backpack,' Dyer wrote in an affidavit filed in court.
Investigators then went back to review outdoor videos, which weren't as clear as the Metro video. This time they had a renewed focus on the fleeing person's feet. The video before the shooting showed a person walking in two shoes, police said, while the video after the shooting showed only a shoe on the right foot. 'When you're looking for it, you can see it,' Nichols said.
Detectives determined the woman had entered the Friendship Heights station using a D.C. Student fare card belonging to a 7-year-old. The primary emergency contact for that card, they said they came to learn, was a 36-year-old woman who lived in District Heights. Research into her address yielded another occupant, Roniyah Thomas, investigators asserted in the court filings.
The detectives kept researching the card, finding it in regular use from the Suitland Metro station near District Heights to the Friendship Heights station. Then they reviewed Metro surveillance video taken at the times and locations of the moving card. On 'all occasions,' detectives asserted, they spotted a person similar in appearance to the person they saw on video the night of the shooting.
Detectives obtained an arrest warrant for Thomas on March 10 and arrested her March 13. Court records indicate she had a job near the shooting scene, and list her as 5-foot-4, 125 pounds.
The results of forensic tests — including possible DNA taken from the sneaker found at the scene — are pending, according to Nichols.
Police say they know Thomas's foot size but declined to share whether the shoe fit.