‘I Honestly Believe It’s a Game’: Why Carjacking Is on the Rise Among Teens
The New York Times
The crime has made a resurgence across the country over the past two years, and many of those arrested are startlingly young.
WASHINGTON — The quiet alley behind his mother’s house was where Tariq Majeed, a 45-year-old father of three, often came for some uninterrupted work. He ran a car-detailing business, and around midday on a chilly Tuesday in late January he was deep-cleaning the back seats of a client’s BMW. He felt a nudge from behind and turned to find it was a gun.
The gunman — who was masked and, Mr. Majeed estimated, could not have been older than a teenager — demanded the keys. When Mr. Majeed fumbled to get them out of his work apron, the young man slammed the gun into the bridge of his nose. Mr. Majeed doubled over, the keys fell out of the apron, and seconds later the car was gone.
The police quickly found the BMW, which had been shut off remotely by an anti-theft system and left behind. They told Mr. Majeed that earlier that morning there had been another carjacking, of a Dodge Durango at a Shell station up the road. The Dodge, too, had been abandoned — not far from where Mr. Majeed was working. No one has been caught.
