A fight outside a downtown Washington restaurant in February that left a Virginia business executive dead will not result in criminal charges, angering the man’s family members who say he was defending female friends when the argument began.
As a result, relatives of 41-year-old Vivek Chander Taneja are feuding with the U.S. attorney’s office for D.C., which concluded that Taneja was the first to throw a punch in a fight that continued to escalate. The family is demanding a second look at what happened in the 2 a.m. dark on Feb. 2 outside Shōtō and Akēdo, two sister Japanese restaurants at 15th and L streets NW.
“A man was killed,” lawyers for Taneja’s family wrote in a letter to prosecutors after learning this month that criminal charges would not be filed. “Law enforcement and the prosecutors know who did it and have evidence that identifies the killer as the aggressor, yet he has not been arrested.”
Advertisem*nt
Declining to prosecute, the letter says, “is a disservice to the citizens of this city, an insult to Taneja’s grieving family, and demands immediate rectification.” The family attorney, Kaveh Noorishad, said the U.S. attorney’s office has not responded to a request that a new prosecutor review the case.
Federal prosecutors, in a letter to police explaining their decision to not file charges, assert that “Taneja made the first physical contact and threw the first punch.” Prosecutors described a “full-on fight” between the two men that lasted less than 10 seconds during which each man knocked the other to the ground.
Prosecutors argue that because they think Taneja instigated the altercation, they “lack evidence to disprove self-defense.” That means they don’t think they have sufficient evidence to prove a crime beyond a reasonable doubt, and thus cannot file charges. Taneja’s family and attorneys disagree with this assessment.
Authorities did not identify the man but confirm he is a former police officer in Virginia. Prosecutors said it is unclear in a surveillance video whether he made contact with Taneja in the final punch that ended in his death or whether Taneja fell while trying to dodge the blow. The prosecutor’s letter says Taneja’s blood alcohol content was more than twice the legal limit for driving while intoxicated in D.C. It was not clear whether the other man had been drinking.
Attempts to reach him on Friday were unsuccessful. Police in Arlington County, Va., said that man had been on the force from May 2012 until he resigned in January 2014. The Washington Post does not typically identify suspects in criminal cases who are not charged.
The altercation occurred after the man and Taneja had separately attended an invitation-only soft opening for the restaurant, according to Taneja’s family and testimony at a public hearing in April before the city’s liquor board. The hearing was described as fact-finding only, and the board took no action against the restaurant.
Advertisem*nt
Authorities said they found no evidence to suggest Taneja — the co-founder and president of Dynamo Technologies, an intellectual technology firm in Northern Virginia — and the suspect had a run-in inside the restaurant. They said whatever led up to the fight occurred in a courtyard outside, 300 feet from the 14-story Midtown Center building. Akēdo was closed when the fight happened.
The initial D.C. police report says an argument turned into a “physical altercation” and Taneja “was knocked to the ground by the suspect and hit his head on the pavement.”
A server for Akēdo, who was outside when the fight occurred, told an investigator for the city liquor board that the suspect “was being weird” toward the women and “the victim told the man to chill out.” Another server said the women were “being harassed by a random male,” and “as a result of standing up to the suspect, [Taneja] was punched then fell to the ground where he hit his head.”
Advertisem*nt
Taneja’s death at the hospital on Feb. 7 was ruled a homicide, and police distributed video of a person of interest. After police identified that man, attorneys for Taneja’s relatives said in their letter to prosecutors that D.C. police “assured the family and their counsel in a formal meeting that an arrest was inevitable and that, based on their review of the facts and unanimous witness testimony, the assailant should not be able to assert a valid claim of self-defense.”
They said police submitted an application for an arrest warrant to the U.S. attorney’s office, which was not signed. D.C. police did not directly address that question. A department spokesman said only that detectives “presented all the facts and circ*mstances of the case” to prosecutors.
The U.S. attorney’s office for D.C. typically does not comment on charging decisions. But in this case, they provided a June 5 letter from Laura R. Bach, a prosecutor and deputy chief of the homicide section, to police Capt. Jeffrey Wade in the Criminal Investigations Division.
Advertisem*nt
Bach wrote that surveillance video shows Taneja, the two women he was with and the suspect passing each other outside the restaurant. The suspect turned and walked toward Taneja “without any obvious signs of threat,” the letter says, adding that Taneja appeared to place his hands on the suspect’s chest as the two women tried to intervene. The video shows Taneja take off his jacket “as if he was preparing to fight” and then punch the suspect, causing him to fall to the ground, Bach wrote.
The suspect got up and punched Taneja, the letter says, and the two fought, culminating in the final punch leading to the fatal injuries.
“What happened to Mr. Taneja was tragic,” Bach’s letter to police says. “We note that he was a loved and respected member of the community, and any of the aggressive conduct he displayed on the night of his death was, by all accounts, totally out of character.”
Advertisem*nt
The attorneys for Taneja’s family said they reviewed two videos from different angles and assert prosecutors didn’t see the second video until after they made their conclusions and that the grand jury only saw one of them. The U.S. attorney’s office said it could not comment; it is illegal for them to discuss secret grand jury proceedings.
“By declining this matter and failing to present the case thoroughly to a grand jury for a vote, the family was denied the opportunity to seek a fair and just trial,” Noorishad’s letter to prosecutors says, adding that they “firmly believe that the assailant instigated and initiated the confrontation.”
The family lawyers say the second video provides context that would show Taneja’s punch as a defensive swing after the man approached, refused to leave and pushed him. The family said in a statement that video shows the alleged assailant “stepped over [Taneja’s] bloody and lifeless body and left he scene without helping him.”
In the statement, Taneja’s relatives described the family as “grief-stricken” and said their mother raised them to be “kind, productive members of society and to help those in need.”
“We put our trust in prosecutors in this case and now feel that the justice system has let us down,” they wrote.
