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Man killed in Alexandria had run from California halfway house

December 1, 2016 at 6:33 p.m. EST

Colby McClennon spent most of his adult life behind bars. Less than two weeks after he escaped from a halfway house in California, at age 41, he was found dead in an Alexandria park.

McClennon had been finishing a nearly 12-year sentence for dealing crack cocaine in Alexandria when he disappeared Nov. 17 from a San Pedro, Calif., home meant to ease his return to society.

On Tuesday, after responding to calls reporting shots fired about 9:24 p.m., police found McClennon near Powhatan Park with trauma to his upper body. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Police are continuing to investigate the killing and have not made an arrest.

McClennon was raised in Alexandria by his mother and grandmother, according to court documents, and attended T.C. Williams High School until he dropped out during 10th grade. By then he was using marijuana that he began enhancing with PCP. He racked up three juvenile convictions for drug dealing, prosecutors said during his last sentencing. Soon after reaching adulthood, in 1993, he was caught selling cocaine in the District’s Congress Heights neighborhood.

Defense attorney Kenneth Troccoli in 2007 filings said McClennon “was caring for and raising himself” by age 15 and “learned from his peers that he could earn money selling drugs, a practice that was not uncommon in his neighborhood.”

When he got out of prison the first time, Troccoli wrote, McClennon tried to find honest employment but could not because of his criminal record and quickly returned to selling crack.

McClennon served five years in prison for the 1993 offense and three years in 2000 for violating his probation, according to court documents, as well as a year in New Jersey for theft in 2004. He was still on probation from that case two years later when he was again caught selling crack in Alexandria.

His “criminal history is horrendous,” Assistant U.S. Attorney John Lynch wrote in court documents at the time, arguing for a harsh sentence. “The only way to protect the public from the Defendant and his crack is to incarcerate him for a very long time.”

His onetime girlfriend, Jamie McAllister, wrote to the court in 2007 asking for leniency. Before his 2006, arrest, McClennon lived in Alexandria with her and their first daughter. When he was arrested she was pregnant with their second.

“Colby constantly talked about how he just wanted to get his life on a positive track,” she said. “Colby has been incarcerated on numerous occasions and it has only destroyed him mentally.”

Because of his prior record and because he was carrying a gun, McClennon was sentenced to nearly 22 years in prison, later reduced to 11½ .

The area where McClennon was killed is on the northern edge of the city, between Route 1 and the George Washington Memorial Parkway. There was an armed robbery on the same street on Tuesday.

Police said a person pointed a firearm at three teenagers and stole their phones. A similar crime occurred nearby, at the Braddock Road Metro station, on Nov. 27. Police said a person brandished a firearm and stole a phone in that incident.