The 12-year-old facing charges in connection with an attempted carjacking in D.C., during which a 13-year-old was killed, was turned in to police by his own mother. A judge ordered the boy held in D.C.’s youth detention center during a hearing Wednesday.
Police said the attempted carjacking happened Saturday night in the 600 block of D Street Northwest, in the Penn Quarter neighborhood. According to police, 13-year-old Vernard Toney Jr. and the preteen boy, both of Southeast D.C., approached an off-duty U.S. Marshal court security officer, who was sitting in his vehicle.
Testifying in court Wednesday, D.C. police Detective Thomas O’Donnell said the boys were holding their hands in their front waistband pockets as if they had handguns when they demanded the officer get out of his vehicle. One of the boys yelled out, “You know what this is,” the detective testified.
As the security officer was getting out of the car, he used a handgun to shoot Toney, the detective said. Both boys ran off, and Toney collapsed in the street while the 12-year-old kept running, according to O’Donnell’s testimony. Toney later died.
The officer legally owned the handgun used to shoot Toney and currently does not face charges.
During Wednesday’s court hearing, a defense attorney for the 12-year-old boy argued that he shows promise in school, gets good grades and would benefit by staying with his family under electronic monitoring.
Judge Sherri Beatty-Arthur disagreed, saying what happened was dangerous and that he shouldn’t be in the community.
The 12-year-old was turned in to police by his mother. According to O’Donnell, clothes matching those seen in surveillance footage from the night of the carjacking attempt were found in the boy’s room. He faces an armed carjacking charge and will be back in court Monday.
“Guns, carjackings, 13-year-olds: recipe for tragedy, and that’s what we have,” D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said during a news conference Monday.
WTOP’s Matt Small contributed to this report.
