By Derrick Perkins

Alexandria police are treating the death of a man on the West End earlier Wednesday evening as a homicide.

Department spokesman Lt. Mark Bergin said both crime scene and homicide investigators were on the scene at 401 N. Armistead St., which is where officers found the victim after receiving reports of gunshots at about 5:30 p.m. The 40-year-old city resident was found in the rear stairwell of an apartment complex known as the Seasons and declared dead at the scene.

Authorities have not identified the victim, who suffered a gunshot wound to his upper chest. Bergin said that information likely would not be released before tomorrow at the earliest.

Bergin said Thursday that investigators have made progress on identifying a motive and possible suspects in the case, but would not go into further detail.

The killing marks the city’s fifth* homicide this year and comes a little more than six months after officials celebrated 2012 as Alexandria’s first year without a murder in decades.

 *An earlier version of this post erroneously listed this death as the city’s third homicide this year. Elmer Roehrs was killed in his home in February, a few days before police officers shot Taft Sellers during an armed confrontation. Julian Dawkins died in May, allegedly at the hands of former Arlington County Sheriff’s deputy Craig Patterson. The fifth was a previously undisclosed death in January. Few details are available about that incident.