On a summer night in June 1983, 31-year-old Prince George’s County Police Officer Carlton Xavier Fletcher was fatally ambushed while working off-duty as a security guard at a Goddard Minimart in Greenbelt, Maryland. Fletcher was preparing to escort store employee Minh Huong Phamdo to the bank when two men armed with shotguns emerged from the darkness, killed Phamdo while seizing money bags, then fired into Fletcher’s parked cruiser. A first blast shattered the window and a second struck Fletcher in the neck, killing him.

Investigators identified and arrested two suspects, Kenneth James Lodowski and his roommate Kamel Ali Elfadl. Lodowski was convicted of first-degree murder, sentenced to death in January 1984, had that conviction later overturned because he was interrogated without counsel, pled guilty at retrial in 1987 and received two life terms that were later combined; he was paroled in January 2000 after 16 years. Elfadl was convicted by a jury for his role, had portions of his convictions overturned on appeal, was retried and convicted again, but ultimately the remaining charges linking him to Officer Fletcher’s murder were dropped by prosecutors in 1993.

Does anyone have memories of Fletcher, Phamdo, or the Greenbelt area in June 1983 that could shed light on the night of the ambush?