D.C. youth fatally shot in carjacking attempt had 9 prior charges |

The 13-year-old boy shot to death Saturday in what police said was an attempted carjacking had nine prior carjacking and robbery charges, all in a five-week period in the District’s Anacostia area, according to two officials familiar with the youth’s history.

Vernard Toney Jr. — fatally shot by a man police said was his intended carjacking victim — is also the second teenager killed in a five-day span in carjacking incidents. A 15-year-old girl arrested Thursday was involved in a carjacking that ended in a crash, killing another teenage girl. Both Vernard and the 15-year-old had records of arrests for earlier carjackings.

“We have ‘Grand Theft Auto’ in real life,” said D.C. anti-violence activist Ron Moten, referring to a video game. “Children think it’s a game. And now they’re dying, and other people are dying, and people are traumatized.”

In August, prosecutors dismissed some of the charges against Vernard, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post, but he was still awaiting prosecution for others.

The back-to-back deaths illustrate the challenges facing District officials, who are under pressure to curb rising violent crime among youths while adhering to the overall ethos in Washington, and other jurisdictions, that juvenile offenders should be rehabilitated instead of punished. Over the past few days, a D.C. Superior Court judge and Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) have pointed fingers at each other over whether the 15-year-old girl should have been securely held before the deadly crash.

Bowser said at a news conference Monday that Judge Andrea Hertzfeld chose to release the girl, who was previously charged with six or seven carjacking incidents, instead of sending her to a detention facility. The judge in court last week criticized the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services (DYRS) for having no available shelter beds for the teen in a nonsecure setting.

“What was available was a secure environment,” Bowser said. “In my opinion, you’ve been arrested for the seventh time in a carjacking, that is where you belong.”

D.C. government data shows that in recent months, about 20 percent of youths who were under DYRS post-trial supervision, but not being held in facilities, were arrested again.

With overall violent crime up in D.C. — most of it committed by adults — officials have failed to find a unified response to what they have deemed a public safety crisis.

The U.S. attorney for the District, whose office prosecutes adult defendants, has started charging more 16- and 17-year-olds as adults with violent crimes. The D.C. attorney general’s office, which prosecutes all youths who are charged as juveniles, maintains that its lawyers are doing all they can. And the executive assistant chief of police, Ashan Benedict, said Monday that police need to be “educating the judiciary and the community” about the severity of youth crime.

In an interview Monday, acting D.C. police chief Pamela A. Smith described the proliferation of crime among youths as “heart-wrenching for me.”

Vernard was charged in May in a spate of carjackings, robberies and assaults over five weeks in Southeast Washington. At a hearing that month, a juvenile court judge ordered him held by the DYRS and said he should undergo psychological and educational evaluations. He was 12 at the time.

On Saturday, months after his initial charges, Vernard and another youth tried to carjack an off-duty federal security officer in the District’s Penn Quarter neighborhood, police said. It was unclear if Vernard was armed when the officer fatally shot him. The officer later told police that one of the youths “had his hand in his front waistband pocket as if he had a handgun,” according to the police report.

Smith declined to comment on specifics of that investigation. The youth who was with Vernard fled and has not been arrested. No charges have been filed in the case. A woman who identified herself as Vernard’s grandmother, reached by phone Sunday, declined to comment. Efforts to reach her Monday were unsuccessful.

Vernard is included in 85 arrests of juveniles in carjackings so far this year, according to D.C. police data, a 20 percent increase compared with the same period last year. The pace of carjackings in the District so far this year has eclipsed any other year dating to at least 2018. Of the 219 cases authorities had solved by late October, 63 percent of arrests involved juveniles.

The mayor and acting police chief have been outspoken about youths’ responsibility for carjacking, at times to the chagrin of defense attorneys, who say the data is skewed because juveniles are easier to catch than adult offenders.

This past spring, Bowser introduced a legislative package that would make it easier to detain some youths awaiting trial. Her initial proposal included a provision that would have allowed judges to consider whether pretrial detention would protect children and teenagers charged with violent crimes. D.C. Council members objected to that provision, and it was left out of the emergency version of the bill.

A few months later, Bowser announced that police would start enforcing the city’s juvenile curfew law in areas where crime is concentrated or where disruptive youths are known to hang out. Civil-liberties advocates responded with ire, saying curfews risk exacerbating tense dynamics between police and communities and are rarely, if ever, effective. But the mayor pushed ahead. As of Oct. 23, police had taken at least 27 youths off the streets for curfew violations, according to D.C. government data.

In an interview Monday, Smith said officers are rightfully frustrated when they keep arresting the same young people. She said a discussion needs to be held “on how often we’re coming in contact with the same juveniles for some of this violent crime.”

Smith said there needs to be more coordination among agencies to intervene and help struggling families in order to reach juveniles before they become entangled in the criminal justice system. She said that she believes in rehabilitating juveniles but that those who commit a “significant pattern of violent crime” have to be viewed “from a different perspective.”

D.C. Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb (D) said in an interview Monday that his office relies on the DYRS and the Superior Court’s social services division, which oversees pretrial probation, to “closely monitor the youths.”

“We are doing everything we need to do and can do, both in terms of prosecution and proactive work,” Schwalb said. “We need all the agencies in the city to do their job, too.”

Data from the D.C. attorney general’s office, which is responsible for prosecuting most juvenile cases, shows that in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2022, a third of juveniles charged with carjackings had previously been charged with violent offenses. Eighteen percent of them had a past carjacking charge.

One of them was the 15-year-old girl who was arrested last week. Police said she was a passenger in one of two carjacked vehicles that crashed in Northeast Washington on Thursday. The girl driving the other car, 16-year-old Kendra Outlaw, was killed.

At a juvenile court hearing for the 15-year-old last week, Hertzfeld said she had reluctantly released the girl back to her parents because the agency had no available housing for her.

Bowser said Monday that DYRS did have secure housing available at the time. She said that “the judge wanted to place” the girl “in a shelter environment that is not secure” but that no such space was available. Rather than place the girl in a secure, jail-like setting, Hertzfeld ordered her released to her parents, the mayor said.

As of early Monday, the city’s secure detention center, New Beginnings, was at capacity, according to government data. The Youth Services Center, another facility that can securely hold juveniles, had four more residents than its maximum of 88 beds could hold.

A court spokesman said judges, including Herzfeld, are barred from commenting publicly on cases. A DYRS spokeswoman did not respond to questions about the capacity of the facilities.

In D.C., as in other jurisdictions, the juvenile justice system is designed to be entirely rehabilitative. Names and records are confidential, defendants are referred to as “respondents,” and the maximum punishment for a youth is confinement until they are 21 years old.

“The first and easiest answer to why these kids with all of these horrible offenses, why are they in the community?” said Coury Mascagni, a juvenile defense attorney in the District. “The first answer would just be the American judicial system: They are innocent until proven guilty.”

Oftentimes, youths convicted of the most serious criminal offenses are committed to the DYRS. The agency then develops individual treatment plans for each juvenile, which can include a combination of secure detention, rehabilitative programming and alternative, nonsecure housing.

As for Vernard, in his cases last spring, Judge Robert Salerno released him into the custody of a parent or guardian and ordered him not to possess any real or imitation weapons, according to court documents reviewed by The Post. A hearing in his case was held Oct. 20 and he was due in court again Nov. 17. A probation officer set an 8 p.m. curfew for him.

Police said the carjacking attempt Saturday occurred shortly after 10 p.m.

“Guns, carjackings, 13-year-olds — recipe for tragedy,” Bowser said Monday. “And that’s what we have.”

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D.C. youth fatally shot in carjacking attempt had 9 prior charges

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