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Montgomery County resident James Carl Jackson, 28, of Silver Spring, will face up to 23 years in prison after pleading guilty on Feb. 14 to second-degree murder while armed for the fatal shooting of Christian Monje.
At approximately 4:30 a.m. on Monday, May 30, 2022, members of the Metropolitan Police Department’s Homicide Branch responded to the 1700 block of Rhode Island Avenue in Northwest, DC, where there was a report of multiple gunshots that rang out in the area.
Upon arrival, officers said that they found Monje on the steps of St. Matthew's Cathedral suffering from a gunshot wound to the head.
He was rushed to an area hospital, where he died weeks after the Memorial Day shooting.
According to prosecutors, camera footage recorded in the area showed Jackson approaching Monje while he sat on the steps of the church. He was later seen fleeing down a nearby alley and ducking behind a dumpster, where a loaded 9mm Polymer80 "ghost gun" was recovered by investigators.
"The case remained unsolved for months until law enforcement received notice of a Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) link between a DNA profile obtained from the magazine of the murder weapon and Jackson’s reference DNA profile," they added.
At the time of his murder, Monje was an employee of Fairfax County Public Schools, and he was remembered by friends and family for his love for cooking and sharing that passion through his social media accounts.
“People knew him as Chef Dembow, which is what he called himself. Christian had a dream to one day have his food truck with his logo CHEF DEMBOW,” organizers of a GoFundMe campaign for Monje wrote earlier this year. “He loved spending time with his only nephew Roman. He was teaching him how to cook so he could one day cook for his mother.”
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