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Arrest made 7 years after off-duty D.C. police officer shot dead, girlfriend wounded while sitting in car in Baltimore
Baltimore prosecutors on Wednesday announced the arrest of a man in the cold case homicide of an off-duty Washington, D.C., police officer in 2017.
The officer, Sgt. Tony Anthony Mason Jr., was shot to death while sitting in a parked car with a woman he had been dating, according to police. She was also shot but survived.
The case sat unsolved for five years until detectives received a tip in early 2023 that reinvigorated their investigation and led to charges against Dion Thompson, 24, prosecutors said in a news release Wednesday. Thompson, who was 18 at the time of the shooting, is currently serving time in a federal prison on unrelated drug and gun charges.
An attorney representing Thompson in that matter said he isn’t representing him in the murder case, which wasn’t listed yet in online records.
His charging documents in the 2017 shooting don’t include a clear statement of motive and they’re based almost entirely on the account of someone who knew Thompson but didn’t directly witness the crime. The person said Thompson admitted to shooting up a parked car because as he was leaving his friend’s grandmother’s house, he spotted a vehicle whose occupants he didn’t recognize and became paranoid, assuming they “were there to either rob him or retaliate against him for all the robberies he was committing,” according to the charging documents.
Thompson learned later from watching the news that the victim was an off-duty police officer, the witness told detectives. Thompson then drove to Philadelphia to get rid of the vehicle he was driving the night of the shooting, prosecutors allege.
Investigators said that Thompson was the leader of a gang called “The Slickest Ones” or TSO, CBS affiliate WUSA-TV reported, citing court documents.
Alleged killer of an off-duty Metropolitan Police sergeant charged by authorities in Baltimore https://t.co/HoP3fYjZ85
— WUSA9 (@wusa9) April 18, 2024
They said he teamed up with accomplices going by the street names of “Man-man” and “Chub” to carry out the shooting. One of them later died in a car crash. Officials said no one else has yet been charged in the case.
Mason, 40, was a 17-year veteran of Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department. A $20,000 reward was offered after he was killed, CBS Baltimore reported.
Detectives noted that he was unarmed during the attack and wasn’t wearing any clothing to identify himself as a law enforcement officer. They said extensive background checks for both Mason and his companion turned up no signs of criminal or gang activity.
“For far too long, the details surrounding Sergeant Mason’s tragic death have remained a painful mystery,” said Metropolitan Police Department Chief Pamela Smith. “While we cannot erase the pain of loss or the memories of that day, we can take solace in the fact that the person responsible is being brought to justice.”
Baltimore State’s Attorney Ivan Bates said this will be the first prosecution brought by his office’s new cold case unit.
Boeing’s 33,000 unionized machinists on Wednesday voted to approve the plane manufacturer’s latest contract offer, ending a seven-week strike that had halted production of most of the company’s passenger planes.
The union said 59% voted to accept the contract. Members have the option of returning to work as soon as Wednesday, but must be back at work by Tuesday, November 12, the union said in a statement.
Union leaders had strongly urged members to ratify the latest proposal, which would boost wages by 38% over the four-year life of the contract, up from a proposed increase of 35% that members of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) had rejected last month.
The revised deal also provides a $12,000 cash bonus to hourly workers and increased contributions to retirement savings plans. The enhanced offer doesn’t address a key sticking point in the contentious talks — restoration of pensions — but Boeing would raise its contributions to employee 401K plans.
Average annual pay for machinists, now $75,608, would climb to $119,309 in four years under the current offer, Boeing said.
The vote came after IAM members in September and October rejected lesser offers by the Seattle-based aerospace giant.
“In every negotiation and strike, there is a point where we have extracted everything we can in bargaining and by withholding our labor,” the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers stated last week in backing Boeing’s revised offer. “We are at that point now and risk a regressive or lesser offer in the future.”
Acting U.S. Labor Secretary Julie Su has played an active role in the negotiations, after recently helping to end a days-long walkout that briefly closed East and Gulf Coast ports.
The Boeing strike that began on Sept. 13 marked the latest setback for the manufacturing giant, which has been the focus of multiple federal probes after a door plug blew off a 737 Max plane during an Alaska Airlines flight in January. The incident revived concerns about the safety of the aircraft after two crashed within five months in 2018 and 2019, killing 346 people.
Boeing in July agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud for deceiving regulators who approved the 737 Max.
During the strike, Boeing was unable to produce any new 737 aircraft, which are made at the company’s assembly plants in the Seattle area. One major Boeing jet, the 787 Dreamliner, is manufactured at a nonunion factory in South Carolina.
The company last month reported a third-quarter loss of $6.1 billion.
contributed to this report.
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