2 men found guilty in revenge kidnappings, murders in DC

WASHINGTON — Two men now face life in prison after appearing in court on Monday. 

Malique Lewis, 26, and Marcel Vines, 28, were found guilty by a federal jury for their roles in the armed kidnappings and subsequent murders of Armani Nico Coles and Kerrice Lewis in Washington, D.C. on Dec. 28, 2017. The verdict, delivered after a four-week trial in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, was announced Monday.

The case, which shook the community, stemmed from a brutal revenge plot. According to the prosecution's evidence, Lewis and Vines, along with a third accomplice, conspired to kidnap and kill Coles and Kerrice Lewis as retribution for the death of their friend, Ronzay Green, earlier that day. Green had been shot and killed by a friend of the victims, leading them to seek revenge.

The chain of tragic events began when Lewis and Vines spotted Kerrice Lewis (no relation), a friend of the man who killed Green, in the 900 block of Longfellow Street Northwest. They kidnapped her at gunpoint from an AutoZone parking lot, holding her in the backseat of her own car. The kidnappers intended to use Lewis as bait to lure the person responsible for Green's death.

When their initial plan failed, Lewis and Vines used Lewis's phone to contact Coles, believing he could lead them to their intended target. Coles was subsequently kidnapped at approximately 6 p.m. near First and Kennedy Streets Northwest and forced into the backseat of Lewis's car. Lewis was confined to the trunk as the men drove the car toward their Clay Terrace neighborhood.

As the defendants encountered traffic on Interstate 295 in Maryland, they shot Coles twice and pushed his dying body from the car onto the shoulder of the highway. The night only worsened when, an hour later, the defendants drove Lewis’s car to an alley behind the 800 block of Adrian Street Southeast. There, they shot Lewis 13 times and set both her body and car on fire before running away.

Ballistic analysis linked the same two guns to both murders. Fingerprints recovered from an item found with Coles’s body were identified as belonging to Vines. The investigation also uncovered video footage of Lewis at a McDonald’s drive-through in Coles’s stolen car the night after the murders. Additionally, Lewis had texted news articles about the murders, bragging that “we ain’t done.”

Lewis and Vines were arrested on Jan. 5, 2018, on unrelated charges and later indicted for the murders. The case was initially prosecuted in D.C. Superior Court before being transferred to federal court in May 2019.

The investigation was a collaborative effort involving the FBI’s Washington Field Office, the Metropolitan Police Department, the Prince George’s County Police Department, and the United States Marshals Service. 

Both defendants face two consecutive mandatory-minimum life sentences, with sentencing dates to be scheduled in the coming days.