Texas congressman Henry Cuellar (D) was carjacked at gunpoint by three men in the Navy Yard neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Monday night.
Rep. Cueller was reportedly uninjured when the men drove off with his white 2019 Toyota C-HR LE on the corner of K Street and New Jersey Avenue SE around 9 PM. Cuellar’s chief of staff, Jacob Hochberg, said the police had recovered his vehicle. According to News4, D.C. law enforcement discovered and apprehended it on the 2600 block of Douglass Road SE in Anacostia.
“As Congressman Cuellar was parking his car this evening, 3 armed assailants approached the Congressman and stole his vehicle. Luckily, he was not harmed and is working with local law enforcement,” he said in a statement.
The U.S. Capitol Police has taken over the investigation from the Metropolitan Police Department as of Tuesday morning.
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“The Metropolitan Police Department responded to a report of an armed carjacking Monday evening at approximately 9:32 p.m. at the intersection of New Jersey and K Street, Southeast. The victim was identified as a member of Congress and the United States Capitol Police took over the investigation. MPD is assisting Capitol Police’s Criminal Investigative Division,” the statement read.
“This happened less than a mile away from the Capitol,” Cuellar told reporters. “My place, you got our [House Democratic] leader Hakeem [Jeffries (D-NY)] there, Katherine Clark (D-MA) lives there, a whole bunch of members that live in that place, so… so… I’ll leave it up to the police on that,” he said about his apartment building which is near to the scene of the crime.
REP. CUELLAR:
"This happened less than a mile away from the Capitol…Our leader Hakeem [is] there, Katherine Clark lives there, a whole bunch of members that live in that place…" pic.twitter.com/Ve2DtZJsQ5
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) October 3, 2023
This is the second time this year that a member of Congress has suffered assault from the rampant crime wave in D.C.
In June, Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN) was assaulted in her apartment building elevator, suffering bruises but escaping before serious injury. Her chief of staff at the time said the attack did not appear to be politically motivated. The man, 26-year-old Kendrid Hamlin, was in the lobby of the apartment building when Craig passed by and said “hello.” He proceeded to follow her to the elevator asking to use her bathroom. She said no, and Hamlin became “agitated” and punched her in the face as she tried to move past him, according to the Capitol Police affidavit. He grabbed her around the collarbone to prevent her from touching the elevator buttons at which point she threw hot coffee on him and escaped.
According to D.C. police data, there have been 753 carjackings in 2023 so far. That is double what it was this time last year. Of those 753, 75 percent have involved guns and 189 have resulted in report closures, meaning the investigator has decided not to proceed further in the case.
The data reveals a steep upward trend in carjackings since June 2020, the month of the George Floyd Black Lives Matter riots and subsequent calls to ‘defund the police’ and decrease prosecution rates. Before that month, no month had seen carjackings reach above 25. Now, most months have seen more than 25 carjackings, and some far more. In June 2023, carjackings reached 140, a record in recent history.
In July 2021, two teenage girls tried to carjack an Uber Eats driver in Washington, D.C., causing him to crash and die. They received the “maximum sentence” by a District Superior Court, which is juvenile detention until they turn 21. The girls assaulted the driver, 66-year-old Mohammad Anwar, with a stun gun as they tried to take his vehicle from him. The shock caused Anwar to lose control and crash, leading to his hospitalization and eventual death. Anwar was described by family as a Pakistani immigrant who came to America in 2014 “to build a better life for himself and his family.”
“He was simply at work […] providing for his family when his life was tragically taken in an appalling act of violence,” they wrote in a GoFundMe post after his death. “Words can not describe how our family is feeling currently. We will carry him with us always, but it doesn’t take the pain away of losing him so tragically and so unexpectedly soon.”
Rep. Cuellar’s congressional office did not respond to Valuetainment’s requests for comment.
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