NBC Washington reporter Derrick Ward, who has delivered local news in the D.C. area for decades, died Tuesday. He was 62.

The local news outlet reported Wednesday Ward died following complications from a cardiac arrest.

As a general assignment reporter, Ward was known for his coverage of tragedies and triumphs in the D.C. area. The D.C. native reported on a swath of historic local events including the 9/11 attacks on the Pentagon and the D.C. sniper shootings, according to his biography on NBC Washington’s website.

Before Ward began reporting for the local NBC affiliate in 2006, he worked in radio at WTOP, WAMU and WPFW.

Joel Oxley, the president of WTOP News and Federal News Network, shared memories of Ward.

“Derrick Ward was truly an outstanding journalist. His passion and dedication shown through every day. But what set him apart was what a great person he was. His warmth and caring were evident at every turn. Everybody liked Derrick. I saw why right away. He’ll be missed tremendously.”

In a statement to WTOP, Ward’s family said:

It is with profound sadness and heavy hearts that we announce the passing of our beloved Derrick Ward, Sr., on Tuesday, January 7, 2025, following complications from a recent cardiac arrest. Derrick has been an inspiration and cherished member of our family and his hometown community, as a longtime reporter at News4 Washington, and previously WTOP Radio. As a distinguished journalist, Derrick’s storytelling, prolific writing, warmth, and humor touched countless lives. Our children and our entire family will miss him dearly.

We ask for your thoughts and prayers during this time, and we extend our gratitude to everyone for the outpouring of love and support. Details regarding his memorial service will be shared in the coming days.

-The Ward, Rampersad, and Sermons Families

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Ward grew up in D.C. and graduated from H.D. Woodson High School in Northeast and the University of Maryland.

Ward is survived by his three children.

See NBC Washington’s announcement of Ward’s death below.

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Neko Williams was walking his dog, King, near 19th and M Streets in the snow Monday evening when his pet suddenly collapsed. He said he could feel mild electrical shocks coming from the ground as he knelt to help his beloved boxer.

“I felt electricity on the ground, and throughout his body.”

News4 has learned King was not the only dog to die at the same spot that same evening after being allegedly electrocuted.

“I touched the ground, and I felt electricity, and I generally don’t know what happened,” Neko Williams said.

Witnesses said he was on the ground cradling his dog.

Nicole Williams said King was family and did everything with them. She said he was a support dog for her son, a gentle protector.

“We’re at a loss for words,” she said. “It’s hard to understand that someone could walk down the street and step and end up electrocuted. It’s just a freak accident. We really want to know what happened.”

The Humane Rescue Alliance told News4 it received calls about two dogs dying after being allegedly electrocuted at the same spot in front of 1140 19th Street Monday.

It said in a statement, “The first dog was taken to an emergency clinic by the owner and pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. A report of a second dead on arrival stray dog has been forwarded to Animal Control.”

News4 saw a large presence of Pepco employees and equipment at the scene Tuesday. A portion of the sidewalk was cordoned off and closed to pedestrians.

In a statement to News4, Pepco said, “Our thoughts are with the individuals impacted by this event. The safety of our customers, communities and employees is always our top priority. We are working closely with local authorities and are continuing to investigate this matter.”

The Williamses say they are grateful to learn King’s death is being investigated and that no one else was harmed.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly 44 years after Jimmy Carter left the nation’s capital in humbling defeat, the 39th president returns to Washington for three days of state funeral rites starting on Tuesday.

Carter’s remains, which have been lying in repose at the Carter Presidential Center since Saturday, will leave the Atlanta campus Tuesday morning, accompanied by his children and extended family. Special Air Mission 39 will depart Dobbins Air Reserve Base north of Atlanta and arrive at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, with a motorcade into Washington and the Capitol, where members of Congress will pay their respects at an afternoon service.

WATCH: Jimmy Carter funeral events – 39th president will be transported to Washington

Carter, who died Dec. 29 at the age of 100, will then lie in state Tuesday night and again Wednesday. He then receives a state funeral Thursday at Washington National Cathedral. President Joe Biden will deliver a eulogy.

There will be the familiar rituals that follow a president’s death — the Air Force ride back to the Beltway, a military honor guard carrying a flag-draped casket up the Capitol steps, the Lincoln catafalque in the Rotunda. There also will be symbolism unique to Carter: His hearse will stop at the U.S. Navy Memorial, where his remains will be transferred to a horse-drawn caisson for rest of his trip to the Capitol. The location nods to Carter’s place as the lone U.S. Naval Academy graduate to become commander in chief.

All of the pomp will carry some irony for the Democrat who went from his family peanut warehouse to the Governor’s Mansion and eventually the White House. Carter won the presidency as the smiling Baptist and technocratic engineer who promised to change the ways of Washington — and eschewed many of those unwritten rules when he got there.

“Jimmy Carter was always an outsider,” said biographer Jonathan Alter, explaining how Carter capitalized on the fallout of the Vietnam War and Watergate scandal that toppled Richard Nixon. “The country was thirsting for moral renewal and for Carter, as this genuinely religious figure, to come in and clean things up.”

From 1977 to 1981, Carter was the city’s highest-ranking resident. But he never mastered it.

“He could be prickly and a not very appealing personality” in a town that thrives on relationships, Alter said, describing a president who struggled with schmoozing lawmakers and reporters.

The gatekeepers of Washington society never embraced Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, either, not quite knowing what to make of the small-town Southerners who carried their own luggage and bought their clothes off the rack. Carter sold what had been the presidential yacht, a perk his predecessors had used to wine and dine Capitol power players.

Early in Carter’s presidency, Washington Post society columnist Sally Quinn tagged the Carters and their West Wing as “an alien tribe,” incapable of “playing ‘the game.’” An elite Georgetown hostess herself, Quinn nodded to Washington’s “frivolity” but nonetheless mocked “the Carter people” as “not, in fact, comfortable in limousines, yachts, or in elegant salons, in black tie” or with “place cards, servants, six courses, different forks, three wines … and after-dinner mingling.”

He endured a rocky four years that left him without enough friends in the town’s power circles and, ultimately, across an electorate that delivered nearly 500 Electoral College votes to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election.

Long after leaving office, Carter still bemoaned a political cartoon published around his inauguration that depicted his family approaching the White House with his mother, “Miss Lillian,” chewing on a hayseed.

Carter often flouted the ceremonial trappings that have been on display in Georgia and will continue in Washington.

As president, he wanted to keep the Marine Band from playing “Hail to the Chief,” thinking it elevated the president too much. His advisers convinced him to accept it as part of the job. And the song played Saturday as he arrived at his presidential center after a motorcade through his hometown of Plains and past his boyhood farm.

He also never used his full name, James Earl Carter Jr., even taking the oath of office. His full name was printed on memorial cards given to all mourners who paid their respects in Atlanta.

He once addressed the nation from the White House residence wearing a cardigan, now on display at his museum and library. His remains now rest in a wooden casket being carried and guarded by military pallbearers in their impeccable dress uniforms.

“He was a simple man in so many ways,” said Brad Webb, an Army veteran who was one of more than 23,000 people who came to honor the former president at his library, which is on the same campus as The Carter Center, where the former president and first lady based their decades of advocacy for democracy, public health and human rights in the developing world.

“He was also a complicated man, who took his defeat and did so much good in the world,” said Webb, who voted for Republican Gerald Ford in 1976 and Reagan in 1980. “And, looking back, some of the things in his presidency — the inflation, the Iran hostages, the energy crisis — were really things that no president can actually control. We get to look back with some perspective and understand that he was an excellent former president but also had a presidency we can appreciate more than we did as it was happening.”