In several Washington-area jurisdictions, the annual number of homicides often runs into the double figures. But in Arlington County, Va., in a display of the differences that can exist between adjacent jurisdictions, the number of slayings last year was one.
On Wednesday, a judge handed down a 32-year sentence in that homicide, a case in which a man was accused of killing his father.
After a guilty plea, Maxwell Adams, 18, of Arlington, was sentenced to 32 years in prison for his role in the death of Dennis “Andy” Adams, 46, the police said.
They said Judge Louise M. DiMatteo imposed consecutive sentences of 27 years on a charge of first-degree murder and five on a charge of stabbing in commission of a felony. The sentences are to run consecutively, the police said.
According to police, detectives determined that the victim was stabbed April 1, 2016, in a house in the 3600 block of South Third Street as the result of what one police official called as “a senseless act of domestic violence.”
So far this year at least four homicides have been reported in Arlington, with its population of about 230,000, according to a Washington Post compilation.