New details found in a court document filed last week show why Dallas police filed a manslaughter charge against a woman who said her son was killed during a road rage incident last month.
On the morning of March 28, 26-year-old Lacravivonne Washington showed up at Medical City Dallas with her son, 3-year-old Jalexus Washington Jr.
The boy's mother told authorities he'd been shot in the head during an apparent road rage incident after she and her three children left a Dallas doughnut shop. Washington told police her children, ages 2, 3, and 4, were unrestrained in her car when the incident allegedly occured.
While conducting the investigation into the road rage claim, Dallas police found a gun in Washington's car even though she said there were no firearms in the vehicle. During a subsequent interview, Washington reportedly waived her Miranda rights and told police she reached for her gun twice during the road rage incident but never pulled it out. She said her kids were moving around the car and then she heard two gunshots, the first of which sounded far away.
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Dallas police said their investigation never turned up any evidence of a road rage incident and they never located a crime scene where the woman said the shooting took place. Additionally, the boy's autopsy indicated there was unburned gunpowder on his body indicating the gunshot that killed him came from close proximity and ruling out his being shot by someone in a passing vehicle.
According to the affidavit obtained Monday, Washington's 4-year-old daughter, Janiyah Washington, told police during an interview that her mother gave her father a gun while they were at the hospital. A separate witness, who was protected and unnamed in the arresting document, said that he observed the woman arrive at the hospital with the injured child and then saw her hide something under her shirt while near the vehicle.
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After he was charged with tampering with evidence, the woman's husband, Jalexus Washington Sr., asked to talk to a detective. During the recorded interview, police said the man told them that when he arrived at the hospital he spoke with his wife outside the presence of officers and that she told him that when the "road rage" gunman was shooting at her she shot back at him and then noticed her son had been shot. He said she then gave him a gun wrapped in cloth and asked him to hide it. He said he put it in his pocket.
A forensic analysis of the gun recovered from Jalexus Washington Sr. showed it was the same gun that killed the boy, police said in the affidavit.
Police said because the woman said she grabbed the gun multiple times, because she told her husband she shot the gun and that because it was her gun that was determined to have fatally shot her son, police said she "recklessly killed" the boy and was charged with manslaughter.
Lacravivonne Washington is currently being held in the Dallas County Jail on a charge of manslaughter and two charges of endangering a child. She is being held on bonds totaling $60,000. It's not clear if she has obtained an attorney.
