Young woman killed in hotel room was home on college break from LSU
An 18-year-old man charged in the District’s first homicide of 2024 fired two shots through a closed hotel room door early Monday, apparently indiscriminately, after being kicked out of a New Year’s Eve party, according to police. They said the bullets struck and killed a college student at the party who was a stranger to the suspect.
Hosts of the party had accused the alleged shooter, Jelani Cousin, of making sexual advances toward an intoxicated guest — a woman other than the victim — and asked Cousin and his friends to leave, according to a police affidavit filed in court. The victim, 18-year-old Ashlei Hinds, who was shot in the chest and near one of her shoulders, had not been involved in the dispute, the affidavit says.
The gunshots, fired from a hallway, came an hour and 18 minutes into the new year on the seventh floor of the Embassy Suites hotel on Military Road NW in Friendship Heights. Two people at the party told police that before the shooting, the suspect flashed his gun while arguing with them and threatened to “blow this spot up,” according to the affidavit.
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Police said the two shots struck Hinds, who was in the front common area of the suite. She walked to the bedroom and sat on the bed. Then, police said, she was seen “falling to the floor.”
Hinds’s death continued a crisis of homicide in the District that ended 2023 with 274 victims dead, the city’s highest annual toll in a quarter-century. Hinds lived in the Clinton area of Prince George’s County and was home on Christmas break from Louisiana State University, where she was a freshman studying sports administration.
“She was the sweetest thing this side of heaven,” the Rev. Kenneth Thomas Sr., her grandfather, said in an interview earlier this week.
D.C. police said they arrested Cousin on Tuesday night and charged him with second-degree murder while armed. Police said he lives in Northeast Washington. Court documents also list him as being a resident of Southeast.
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Cousin, through his lawyer, pleaded not guilty during a hearing Wednesday in D.C. Superior Court, attended by about a dozen of Hinds’s family members, who sat with a prosecutor in the back of the courtroom until the case was called. Six court security officers — more than the usual two — lined up along the back wall.
The defense attorney, Kevin Mosley, argued that witnesses saw his client before and after the gunfire but not during the shooting. He also argued that police have not found a firearm linking Cousin to the shooting.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Natalie Hynum requested Cousin be detained, noting security video that shows Cousin at the hotel and two witnesses who identified him as the shooting suspect.
Magistrate Judge Eric Sabastian Glover said there was sufficient evidence to order Cousin detained at the D.C. jail until the next hearing on Jan. 16. Hinds’s family declined to comment after the hearing.
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Thomas, 71, pastor of Johnson Memorial Baptist Church in Southeast Washington, said his granddaughter “had big dreams and big plans. And we had big dreams and big plans for her. And now she’s gone. And for what? Because somebody was being stupid. And this city tells these kids they can be stupid, and that nobody is going to be held accountable. It’s shameful.”
Thomas was referring to a political debate in Washington over how to drive down crime. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), along with Police Chief Pamela A. Smith and some D.C. Council members, are advocating for more aggressive policing, prosecutions and detentions, arguing that the city’s public safety and justice systems have failed to hold criminals responsible.
D.C. Council member Matthew Frumin (D-Ward 3), who represents the area where the hotel is located, said there will be a public safety community meeting with Smith and other officials on Jan. 17.
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“We face an epidemic of gun violence in our city that impacts every resident regardless of age, income, or Ward, and we must work together across government to empower public safety agencies to stem the tide of violence,” Frumin said in a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, after Hinds was killed.
Hinds grew up in Maryland with her mother; her younger sister, now 13; and her grandparents. At 16, she took an interest in photography and taught herself how to take and edit pictures. She graduated from Henry A. Wise Jr. High School in Upper Marlboro, where she was the student body president and on the honor roll.
Thomas said his granddaughter played softball and helped coach the girls’ lacrosse team, which he thinks sparked her interest in sports administration. The family visited several universities, and wound up choosing the first school she had seen, LSU in Baton Rouge.
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“She was smart,” said her mother, Tiffany Falden. “She was friendly, articulate, educated. She just had a beautiful spirit.”
Falden, an accountant, said her daughter had no shortage of friends in high school and instantly bonded with dorm mates and classmates at LSU. “She found her place there,” Falden said.
“When she first got down there, she called me and said, ‘This is really hard,’” Thomas recalled. “I encouraged her. I reminded her who she was and that she could do whatever she decided to do. She called me back and said she was fine.”
Thomas said the family visited Hinds at LSU and that Hinds came home for Thanksgiving — for her grandmother’s cooking — and again for Christmas. Thomas said her daughter’s best friend asked her to go to the New Year’s party and, out of loyalty, Hinds agreed. “She didn’t really go out” regularly, her grandfather said.
Thomas said police told him that the party was initially only women but that someone, unbeknownst to the others, invited young men. One person at the party told police the young men were acting “disrespectfully.”
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Cousin was asked to leave the party because a woman he reportedly made sexual advances toward was intoxicated, according to the affidavit. After that, “further arguments occurred,” the affidavit says.
Police released a photo of a man leaving the hotel. He was wearing a ski mask, and police said he had distinctive writing on his jacket, which helped investigators eventually identify him.
Thomas said he has presided over “too many” funerals for young people. And he said he will preside at the services for his granddaughter. But he hasn’t yet found the words he’ll deliver.
“I will let the Spirit lead me,” he said.
Razzan Nakhlawi contributed to this report.
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