WASHINGTON — A teenage girl pleaded guilty Tuesday in connection with a string of robberies and a carjacking that left another teen dead following a crash in October.
The girl, who WUSA9 is not identifying because she was charged as a juvenile, pleaded guilty to six felony counts: five counts of robbery and one count of unauthorized use of a vehicle. The robbery counts stem from a string of incidents in April and September in which the girl and other teens robbed, and in some cases assaulted, victims for their purses, cellphones and cash.
D.C. Superior Court Judge Andrea Herzfeld, who took the plea Tuesday, denied a request from the girl’s lawyer to send her to a youth shelter – saying she’d engaged in a “monthslong spree victimizing people in the community.” The girl was ordered to stay in custody at the Youth Services Center, which is D.C.’s juvenile detention center.
Herzfeld also ordered a psychological evaluation for the girl who, according to her lawyer, is still dealing with the trauma of the fatal October crash that killed another teen. The collision, which involved two carjacked vehicles, occurred in the early morning hours of Oct. 26 near the intersection of Saratoga Avenue NE and Brentwood Road NE. Police said one of the vehicles had been carjacked hours earlier from a rideshare driver and their passenger.
The girl’s case helped put a spotlight on a critical shortage of youth shelter beds in the city after Mayor Muriel Bowser blasted the court for sending the teenager home, instead of to YSC, following her previous arrest on robbery charges. Herzfeld had sought to place the girl in a youth shelter, which allows juveniles to continue attending school and earn home visits for good behavior, but had sent her home on GPS monitoring instead after learning there were no shelter beds available.
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Last month, Herzfeld ordered the director of the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, which oversees youth detention in the District, and threatened him with contempt over at least nine instances in the last year in which judges had ordered juvenile offenders into a shelter house while they awaited trial but they had been placed in a lockdown facility instead due to a lack of space. Attorneys from Georgetown Law’s Juvenile Justice Clinic and Initiative are seeking compensation for another juvenile who was placed in lockup for five days despite being ordered to a shelter.
Abed was in court again Tuesday to provide the judge with an update on DYRS’ efforts to bring more shelter beds online. In a status report presented to the court, Abed said DYRS had reached an agreement with a vendor to provide 10 youth beds in a shelter house facility beginning in March 2023. DYRS also signed an agreement with Hope House this week to provide six new beds and is in the process of negotiating for an additional eight-bed facility with a third vendor. He said he expected those facilities to also come online around March .
Herzfeld ordered another status hearing for March to hear how DYRS is progressing in its efforts to bring more beds online. Until then, she said, she would continue holding her contempt order at bay.