Prosecutors, police take down DC, MD carjacking rings
WASHINGTON (DC News Now) — Law enforcement and prosecutors said they’ve taken down two carjacking rings terrorizing parts of Maryland and the District.
The announcement came Monday afternoon, with U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves announcing the federal indictment of 10 people in connection with two carjacking rings that were responsible for at least 15 armed carjackings across Maryland and D.C.
Prosecutors said many of the people charged in the indictment are teenagers or were at the time of the crimes.
FBI Assistant Director in Charge David Sundberg described the victims in these carjackings as regular people going about their daily lives, saying it didn’t matter the time of day or the neighborhood.
“The carjackers showed no mercy or remorse to the victims: a dentist on her way to work, a mother buckling her children into her vehicle in front of a school, an elderly couple pulling into the driveway of their own home,” said Sundberg.
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One of the victims, a rideshare driver, was shot by one of the teens trying to steal his car.
Investigators say in some of these cases the teens tried to resell the cars for cash.
Graves says the teens compared their crimes to a video game.
“One defendant wrote, ‘GTA IRL,’ which we allege means ‘Grand Theft Auto In Real Life,'” said Graves. “We need to have a serious response to show people that this is not a game. This is the real world and there will be real world consequences.”
He says police and prosecutors have held up their end of the bargain. Now, he says they need judges to back them up and impose heavier sentences.
In D.C., the mandatory minimum for armed carjacking is 15 years.
Since the alleged carjackers are all younger than 25, graves says the District’s Youth Rehabilitation Act may get in the way of those long sentences.
“D.C. law has effectively eliminated mandatory minimums for armed carjacking, and done so in a way that signals to judges that those sentences should be less than the minimum,” said Graves.
He says the act gives serious leniency to judges to sentence however they please when it comes to offenders younger than 25. In similar cases, Graves says they’re seeing sentences far shorter than those minimums.
He says his office is working to change that trend.
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