A U.S. Marshall parked outside Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s home shot an attempted carjacker who drew his gun on the marshall and his partner while they were on duty early Friday morning.
Around 1 a.m. on July 5, the 18-year-old suspect approached the marshalls in their car — sitting on Sotomayor’s block — and pointed his gun in the driver’s side window, according to multiple outlets who reviewed police and court records.
It’s unknown if Sotomayor was home at the time.
The shooting is another example of crime in the nation’s capital hitting federal officials and those in their circles. Representative Mike Collins (R., G.A.) called Washington, D.C. a “warzone” after one of his staffers was robbed at gunpoint in Navy Yard. A staffer for Senator Rand Paul (R., K.Y.) was stabbed last year by a man who was later moved to a D.C. mental hospital.
Carjackings in the city jumped 565 percent between 2019 and 2023, according to data compiled by the Council on Criminal Justice. While violent crime across the board is down this year, it increased in 2023 by nearly 40 percent over the prior year. More than 25o carjackings have already been reported in the city so far this year, a significant decrease compared to last year. More than 70 percent involved guns.
The city council passed the Secure D.C. bill in March, aimed at cracking down on crimes like carjacking. But the new measures will need to overcome hesitation in the court system to prosecute crimes.
When addressing the problem of juvenile crime, D.C. district attorney Brian Schwalb said earlier this year that the city “cannot prosecute and arrest our way out of it.” In 2022, the D.C. U.S. attorney Matthew Graves declined to prosecute nearly 70 percent of arrested suspects.
This story is still developing and will be updated with further details.
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