Washington, DC – A 13-year-old child described as “smart and talented” was gunned down as he tried to carjack an off-duty cop in our crime-ridden nation’s capital last week.
As NBC Washington reported Monday, 13-year-old Vernard Toney Jr., of Southeast D.C., was shot and killed in the 600 block of D Street NW, near 7th Street, in the Penn Quarter area.
The Metropolitan Police Department said Toney was taken to a hospital in critical condition. In an update Sunday, police revealed that he died of his injuries.
Police involved in the investigation say the victim was sitting in a white Toyota Highlander when Toney and another youth ordered him to exit the vehicle. One of the children was “holding his hand in his front waistband pocket, as if he had a handgun,” according to a police statement.
The officer then grabbed his handgun and fatally shot Toney in self-defense. Police are still searching for the other youth who took off and ran to avoid a similar fate.
Toney was a seventh grade student at Kelly Miller Middle School in Northeast D.C. Dr. Donnell Cox, the principal, wrote a letter to families calling Toney “smart, funny, and talented.”
Cox continued to praise what he described the teenager’s comedic ability and commented on his love for basketball.
He had a natural comedic ability and loved to make people laugh, especially when he would joke that he was the principal of Kelly Miller MS. Vernard also loved to play basketball and spend his free time on the court with his friends.
Democrat DC Mayor Muriel Bowser called Toney’s death a “tragedy.”
Guns, carjackings, 13-year-olds: recipe for tragedy. And that’s what we have.
NBC Washington notes this was not Toney’s first run-in with the law. The station revealed that Toney, then 12, was arrested in May in connection with a number of armed carjackings in Southeast D.C.
It is unknown at this point what happened with these cases. What is known is that crime in DC has skyrocketed after the City Council decided to weaken crime laws in order to pacify racial agitators and the radical left.
According D.C. crime statistics, 827 carjackings have already this year.Out of those carjackings, 74% involved the use of firearms.
Even more disturbing, most of the individuals arrested are under 18.
But DC City Council members are ignoring these harsh facts. Some are even denying with a straight face that there is a crime crisis!
The council is so out-of-control that Congress back in March passed a GOP-backed resolution to overturn a DC crime law that weakened penalties for violent crimes like carjackings. Joe Biden eventually signed the resolution into law.
Unless law and order is restored in our major cities, more juveniles like Toney will enter the crime world and tragic results will continue to follow.
This story originally appeared on TheGateWayPundit
