Elizabeth Bessie Hutson was 28 when she was shot and killed while walking her dogs in Mount Pleasant, Washington, D.C., on March 23, 1993. She was using an alley that runs parallel to Park Road NW between 19th Street and Rock Creek Park when a small blue car approached and a passenger fired a 20-gauge shotgun from the vehicle, striking her in the alley.

The killing followed weeks of similar drive-by shotgun attacks across Columbia Heights and Mount Pleasant. Those earlier incidents included wounded pedestrians and a barbershop killing; community concern escalated after a March 17 attack in Mount Pleasant blinded a young woman in one eye. Detectives reclassified the pattern as a random mobile shooter only after Hutson’s death.

The shooter was later identified as James Edward Swann Jr., known as the Shotgun Stalker. A blue Toyota and a 20-gauge shotgun linked him to the spree; he was taken into custody on April 19, 1993. Swann’s attacks killed multiple people and wounded others during roughly two months, profoundly unsettling the neighborhoods where they occurred.

Did anyone who lived in Mount Pleasant or Columbia Heights in 1993 have memories or information about Bessie Hutson’s routine or that alley that could add detail to her story?