The younger of two girls charged in the second-degree murder of Mohammad Anwar, 66, was sentenced to a youth facility until she turns 21, according to Washington, D.C. CBS affiliate WUSA. Now 14, the girl has seven years left in custody.
The girl and her 15-year-old co-defendant, who were both unidentified because they were both charged as juveniles, carjacked Anwar, an immigrant from Pakistan who was working as an Uber Eats driver. As seen on video, Anwar held onto the driver’s side door of his vehicle as teens wrestled control of the car and took off down the street. The door violently struck several roadside fixtures.
“It’s my car,” Anwar said before the vehicle sped away.
A loud crash occurred down the street. The car had flipped onto its driver’s side. Anwar lay dying on the sidewalk.
The teens had been armed with a stun gun, authorities said.
The younger defendant was then 13. At her sentencing, both sides argued over whether or not she was truly remorseful.
“If you just given me my ‘blanking’ phone, you’d still be alive, but no, you went and put my damn phone in your pocket,” the girl allegedly said at the scene via a statement recounted by WUSA reporter Bruce Leshan. The teenager lied to bystanders about whose car they took, the prosecutor reportedly said. But the state put responsibility on the teen: she chose to grab the steering wheel, chose to put the car in gear, and chose to repeatedly tell her 15-year-old conspirator to go, prosecutors said.
The teen apologized for the incident in court.
“I never meant to do it,” she said in a brief statement, according to The Washington Post. She promised to change. Her attorney, Coury Muscagni, requested that the defendant only be detained until turning age 18, saying she showed remorse, wished she could take back what happened, became more thoughtful about her behavior, and had been a model detainee, according to WUSA.
But D.C. Superior Court Judge Lynn Leibovitz gave the teen the longest possible sentence with the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, saying she needed “very intensive services.”
[Screengrab via WUSA]
