MPD Arrests a 12-Year-Old in a Nannie Helen Burroughs Avenue Robbery Set Up Through an Online Marketplace Sale

A jacket sale arranged on an online marketplace ended in a robbery in Northeast Washington on Thursday, and the suspect police arrested is 12 years old. The Metropolitan Police Department said the victim met the suspects in the 4300 block of Nannie Helen Burroughs Avenue, Northeast, at about 6:17 p.m. on Thursday, October 29, to sell a jacket advertised on an online marketplace. Officers located and arrested one of the suspects shortly after the incident, and a 12-year-old juvenile male of Northeast, D.C. was charged with robbery (snatch). Police released no name, as is standard for a juvenile.

The department said the case remains under investigation, which leaves the rest of the group police described - the victim met more than one suspect - still to be accounted for in the department's public account. Anyone with knowledge of the incident is asked to call police at (202) 727-9099 or text a tip to the department's TEXT TIP LINE at 50411. MPD offers a reward of up to $1,000 for information that leads to the arrest and indictment of the person or persons responsible for a crime committed in the District of Columbia. The case is filed under CCN 26155642.

The mechanics of the case are the part the department's release puts in front of every marketplace seller in the District: a routine listing, a meeting set on a residential block in the early evening, and a robbery at the handoff. Police accounts of marketplace robberies in the city turn on that same arrangement often enough that the safety advice writes itself from this release alone - meet where the transaction can be seen, and treat a quiet block after dark as a reason to move the meeting, not to keep it.