WASHINGTON (Map, News) - The public has paid more than $60,000 to keep two veteran D.C. police officers home as an investigation into the shooting death of Southeast teenager DeOnte Rawlings drags into its sixth month.

James Haskel and Anthony Clay have been left in limbo by a federal investigation into their gunfight with 14-year-old DeOnte in a Southeast alley last September.

They’ve continued to draw their salaries while on leave.

Authorities have believed since the early hours of Sept. 17 that DeOnte opened fire on the officers before he was struck in the head by a bullet. But authorities are afraid to close the case because they still haven’t recovered the weapon DeOnte purportedly used and few witnesses have come forward, top law enforcement sources told The Examiner.

Complicating matters, sources said, is the way in which DeOnte’s death was quickly politicized. Rank and file officers and top officials in the U.S. Attorney’s Office remain miffed at the way Mayor Adrian Fenty rushed to accommodate DeOnte’s family, going so far as to give DeOnte’s sisters an open microphone at one of Fenty’s news conferences — and then sitting idly as they accused the police of covering up their brother’s death.

Channing Phillips, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, didn’t respond to requests for comment. The officers’ lawyer, Robert A. Ades, declined comment.

Gregory L. Lattimer, a lawyer who has filed a wrongful-death suit on behalf of DeOnte’s family, told The Examiner that prosecutors have never had any intention of conducting a fair investigation. He said that DeOnte’s relatives still have not been asked to identify his body, a formality that precedes a grand jury investigation­.

“This is a sham,” Lattimer said. “The only thing they’re doing is waiting for the appropriate time to announce what I knew they were going to announce in the beginning — which is that they’re not going to pursue the charges.”

On the night that DeOnte died, Haskel and Clay were looking for a minibike stolen from Haskell’s home. They told authorities that they saw DeOnte sitting atop it in an alley in far Southeast.

The FBI’s “shot spotter,” a high-tech gauge that is designed to register gunfire and zero in on the location of the shots, recorded a shot or shots from a .38-caliber pistol, followed by multiple shots from 9 mm pistols, according to sources.

A few days after DeOnte’s death, his friend, Clifton Coleman, 19, was arrested and charged with shooting his girlfriend in the face. Coleman told authorities that he was with DeOnte the night the boy was killed and that DeOnte had opened fire on the officers with a .38-caliber pistol, sources said.

Got a tip on the DeOnte case? Call Bill Myers at 202-459-4956 or e-mail bmyers@dcexaminer.com.