13-Year-Old Shot Dead in DC After Apparently Trying to Intimidate a Federal Officer
Like other Democrat-controlled cities, Washington has devolved into a lawless cesspool, thanks to soft-on-crime liberal policies and the catastrophic fallout of demonizing the police.
On Saturday, 13-year-old Vernard Toney Jr. was fatally shot while attempting to carjack an off-duty federal security officer, according to a news release from the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department on Monday.
Authorities said the officer was sitting in his car around 10 p.m. waiting for his shift to begin when he was approached by two teenagers.
“They demanded the victim get out of his car, with one holding his hand in his front waistband pocket as if he had a handgun,” the MPD said.
“As the victim was getting out of the car, he produced a handgun and shot one of the suspects. The other suspect fled the area.”
The federal security officer had a legally owned firearm and is cooperating with the investigation, according to authorities.
Police are still looking for the second suspect in the carjacking, who remains at large.
*Updated with Photo*
MPD Investigating Death of Juvenile Male After Carjacking
Read More: https://t.co/9SFf13pv7I pic.twitter.com/x281TC0bom
— DC Police Department (@DCPoliceDept) October 30, 2023
This incident occurred amid a jaw-dropping 107 percent increase in carjackings in Washington compared with the same period last year.
Since January, there have been 827 carjackings — with 74 percent involving guns, according to police statistics.
This is ironic since D.C. “has enacted some of the strongest gun violence prevention legislation in the nation,” according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
This underscores once again that gun control laws don’t deter crime since criminals always manage to get access to firearms illegally.
If you peruse the news releases posted daily by the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, you can see just how badly crime has spiraled out of control in the left-wing city.
On Monday, a 16-year-old boy was charged with six carjackings — both armed and unarmed — across the District. The suspect, Isaiah Davis, allegedly committed all these crimes over just two days.
In a separate case, a 15-year-old boy was charged on Monday in connection with four carjackings. In three of the incidents, he was armed, according to police.
There is something rotten about today’s warped youth culture with so many teens cavalierly committing violent crimes.
Earlier this month, Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas was robbed and carjacked at gunpoint in the Navy Yard neighborhood of Washington, where multiple members of Congress live.
There have been other violent crimes in D.C. recently targeting members of Congress.
The situation is so grim that Washington’s Democratic mayor, Muriel Bowser — a supporter of the anti-police Black Lives Matter movement — has backtracked following a horrific crime wave unleashed by George Floyd-era “police reforms” that incentivized lawlessness.
Tragically, the off-the-charts crime infesting the nation’s capital mirrors an appalling trend metastasizing in other blue cities, such as Philadelphia, New York, San Francisco and Chicago.
At both the federal level (through lax border security) and the local level, Democrats’ soft-on-crime policies and demonization of police have compromised public safety and national security.
It is long past time to stop this madness.
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