His plan for the rest of the evening was simple. Pick up his car, take it back to his storage room, lock it up, then go home to his basement apartment at the Mayberrys’.

But everything changed suddenly when he scanned to his right. There, parked in the darkness of a private driveway, sat a Metro D.C. police cruiser. The vehicle itself was a little odd, as this was Maryland, after all, but the fact that at least two men sat in the dark car was more suspicious to him.

D.C. cops usually ride alone in their patrol cars.

Court began crossing the street, heading away. Behind him he heard the doors of the police cruiser open.

Court looked to his left and right for a place to run, expecting that at any moment the cops were going to call out to him, or else they were right now radioing for backup and within minutes cruisers, tactical units, and helicopters would surround him.

He looked on either side of the road and saw rows of adjoining houses. Short of kicking in a door or a window, he had nowhere to run.

“And this night keeps getting better and better,” Court mumbled to himself.

Just fifty feet in front of him was the overpass; he knew he’d reach a decision point there. Either he’d turn and run into the neighborhood here, before he got stuck on the overpass; he’d try to run across the overpass and lose the cops on foot over there; or else he would slide down the embankment and into the traffic of the Beltway.

No option looked like a good one, but while he kept walking he couldn’t help but wonder why the two cops, just fifty feet behind him now, hadn’t challenged him yet.

The answer presented itself a moment later when two more Metro PD squad cars pulled onto the far end of the overpass and stopped. Car doors opened and four police officers poured out, fanned out away from the vehicles, and drew their pistols.

Time to run.

Court turned to his right and raced for the embankment. He had taken only a few steps in this endeavor—he was still twenty feet from the steep concrete slope to the Beltway below—when gunfire erupted in front of him.

What the fuck? Court thought. The cops were just gunning him down, not even giving him a chance to surrender.

Within the first five cracks of incoming fire, Court felt a sharp sting wide on his right rib cage. His gray parka ripped, and he doubled over while running. He stumbled almost all the way to the ground, to the point that his hands went flat on the street, but he kept moving, rose back up, and leapt over the railing of the overpass without taking time to look below.