Assault at Wheaton Regional Park

Montgomery County police responded to a report of a 2nd-degree assault at Wheaton Regional Park on Friday, April 17, 2026. The assault was reported at the park, which is located at 2000 Shorefield Road, at 7:30 PM. It should be noted that the park officially closes at 7:00 PM each night.

ALERT: Possibly-rabid raccoon in Wheaton/Kemp Mill area

Montgomery County is alerting residents in the Arcola Avenue area of Wheaton and Kemp Mill that there is a potentially-rabid raccoon on the loose in that vicinity. Areas likely to be frequented by the raccoon would include Arville, Kemp Mill, Wheaton Regional Park, Arcola Local Park, Sligo Creek, and Colt Terrace Neighborhood Park. However, keep in mind that the typical raccoon in a developed area like this may travel as far as one-to-two miles each night, so you really want to be aware of your surroundings during the day and night, if you are within a mile or two of Arcola Avenue. Behavior and movement of a raccoon will also be affected if it is rabid; it is more likely to roam during daylight hours, for example.

The raccoon in question has bitten two people in the 1800 block of Franwall Avenue in the Arville neighborhood. The County Office of Animal Services and the Department of Health and Human Services are asking residents to be alert, and to share this information with neighbors. Rabies is a serious disease that is typically fatal if the victim of exposure does not receive rabies shots in time.

Residents are asked to call 911 and Animal Services at 240-773-5900 if they come into immediate contact with an animal acting aggressively or strangely. If you determine you are not in immediate danger from the animal, you can just call Animal Services to report your sighting so that they can investigate.  HHS advises that if you and/or your pet had contact with a raccoon in this area, to seek medical or veterinary care immediately. If you can supervise your pets' outdoor time, and keep them indoors the rest of the time, that would be the safest way to avoid or be aware of any contact with this raccoon.

Wheaton residents exasperated with MoCo's failure to enforce laws on residential streets

Forget illegal parking within 35' of
a stop sign - this car is parked AT the
stop sign

Wheaton residents are questioning why Montgomery County is not putting more code and law enforcement resources into their area, as crimes and violations continue to increase. Four years after Connecticut Avenue Estates requested more assistance with illegal trash dumping on neighborhood streets, the problem persists. Parking of work trucks and rampant parking violations, including vehicles left too close to driveways and intersections, go unpunished across Wheaton neighborhoods. This despite new parking laws having been passed almost a decade ago to supposedly address the issue.

Illegal parking at driveway

Kimblyn Persaud, President of the Wheaton Regional Park Neighborhood Association, says Wheaton residents deserve the same level of enforcement and quality of life as those living in Bethesda. While the County has occasionally deployed more officers to the neighborhood in response to complaints, Persaud argues those efforts need to be sustained and ongoing to have any real impact. "The bottom line is, we need dedicated officers," she said.

"You can't see around these working vans, cars and vans are parked all the way to end of the corner, past stop signs and right into the street," Persaud added. "Large commercial vehicles, in violation of height restrictions, are still being allowed to park on residential streets, cars are often parked in the wrong direction, food trucks allowed to be stored on the streets and numerous garbage cans and cones holding parking spaces. Where is the quality of life in living like this, and why should we have to wait till a child, darting between work vans, gets hit?"

At the same time, increasing crime, gang activity and drug deals are taking up much of the time of those officers who are on patrol. "Even officers don't feel safe over here," Persaud said. "Nobody but a fool would walk by themselves down Shorefield [Road] and Connecticut Avenue Estates at night, and that's including officers.  So when a complaint is called in, officers respond by driving by, but they haven't been stopping!"

Persaud questions why Wheaton residents are being treated as children of a lesser god, despite the great wealth and progressive politics of Montgomery County. Given the highly-diverse demographics of Wheaton, she said race may be a factor. During scandals like Farm Road and the Moses African Cemetery in recent years, institutional racism in Montgomery County government has indeed come to light. In fact, the County Executive and County Council offices, and the Planning Board, have each called in as many as 7 police officers to confront African-Americans exercising their First Amendment rights to testify and peacefully protest. Police have never been called on white residents under the same circumstances, a disparity that should be under an even brighter spotlight after the recent Starbucks incident.

"The continued perpetuation of structural racism not only hurts Wheaton and Montgomery County, but it hurts us as individuals," Persaud said.  "We deserve to be safe, we deserve to have the protection of the police, from both crime and parking violations. We deserve clean neighborhoods, that are not roach and rat-infested." She cited promises made four years ago in emails by Councilmembers Nancy Navarro and George Leventhal, which have proven to be empty promises.  "We deserve so much better than what this County Executive and County Council has done," she said.

Illegal dumping remains a problem,
four years after the Council promised to end it

Illegal parking up against an
intersection

Parked cars in a no-parking zone

Parking within 35' of an intersection
along Shorefield Road

Photos: Kimblyn Persaud

MS-13 member charged in Wheaton Regional Park homicide; was in MoCo police custody in 2016

An MS-13 gang member has been charged with first degree murder, in the case of an unidentified homicide victim found in Wheaton Regional Park on September 5. And once again, this may have been a preventable homicide - the man charged had a previous run-in with Montgomery County police in 2016, when he was cited for theft of under $100, according to Maryland court records.

Miguel Angel Lopez-Abrego, 19, had no address then, and still had no confirmed address when he was located in North Carolina by police on November 11, 2017. He has been extradited to Montgomery County, and is due in court today in Rockville for a bond hearing. A preliminary court hearing for Lopez-Abrego has been set for December 22.

Once again, we find the inability of police to check immigration status may have led to the death of a man in Wheaton Regional Park. If Lopez-Abrego had been determined to be in the country illegally while in police custody on October 24, 2016, he would have been deported long before killing the man found in the park this year - a man who police say was stabbed more than 100 times. Instead of ICE taking him into custody for deportation, Lopez-Abrego was let go, and a warrant was issued for his arrest on December 6, 2016.

In just the past two weeks, Montgomery County has seen first-hand that the current policy has led to two preventable homicides. The first was that of a young mother, also in Wheaton. Like her, the victim in this case - while unidentified - was also Latino. In fact, it is the Latino and immigrant communities which are being victimized the most by gangs in Montgomery County. Just ask the Watkins Mill High School mother who buried her 15-year-old daughter (stripped and executed by MS-13) this year, surrounded by undercover police officers in case MS-13 raided the funeral or graveside ceremony.

Ironically, our elected officials hide behind the race card in defending their indefensible sanctuary policies. Of course, they're finding it harder and harder to defend the indefensible. Last Friday, WMAL radio host Larry O'Connor asked every single member of the Montgomery County Council to come on-the-air to defend their sanctuary policies, after it was found that those policies may have directly led to the death of Dania Mendez de Guerra. Not a single councilmember had the guts, confidence or conviction to come on the program and debate O'Connor.

SUPPORT WHEATON REGIONAL PARK AT MACY'S IN WESTFIELD WHEATON PLAZA (PHOTO)

Stop by a register at Macy's in Wheaton Plaza before March 31, and you can help raise money for Wheaton Regional Park. Donate any amount from $1 and up, and Macy's will match your gift, up to a total of $250,000. In other words, when Macy's reaches $250,000 in matching donations across all donors, the fundraising campaign will end.