A 15-year-old boy pleaded guilty for his role in last month’s mob assault on a former Department of Government Efficiency staffer in the District, an incident that set off President Trump’s crime-fighting surge of National Guard troops and federal authorities in the nation’s capital.
Prosecutors said the boy was part of the youth gang that jumped ex-DOGE staffer Edward Coristine on Aug. 3 as he and his date returned to his car near 14th Street Northwest.
Mr. Coristine, 19, was able to lock his date inside the vehicle before the group started whaling on him.
The juvenile boy pleaded guilty Wednesday to attempted robbery and simple assault, a plea first reported by The Washington Post.
The attack enraged the president, and a week later Mr. Trump announced he was taking control of the Metropolitan Police Department, ordering federal agents to patrol the streets and sending thousands of National Guard soldiers into the city.
The month-long emergency, which ended Sept. 10, netted more than 2,300 arrests and 220 gun seizures.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, credited the surge for driving down violent crime in the District. Homicides fell 50%, robberies dropped nearly 60% and carjackings plummeted more than 70%.
But Ms. Bowser and other D.C. leaders, almost all Democrats, told Congress last week that the influx of FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration agents merely accelerated a crime decline that was underway because of local initiatives.
Meanwhile, House Republicans have passed a handful of bills looking to exert greater influence over the District’s public safety system.
Their proposals would relax rules around police pursuits, give the president more say in nominating judges to the D.C. Superior Court and seek to lower the age at which youths can be charged as adults to 14.
Back in juvenile court, the 15-year-old boy who attacked Mr. Coristine also pleaded guilty to a strong-arm robbery at a U Street gas station shortly before the group confronted the former DOGE employee.
Prosecutors said the boy hit two victims and kicked another one in the head as they lay on the ground. He was convicted of felony assault and robbery in the mugging.
Judge Kendra Briggs ordered the boy to stay on a 24-hour curfew, which lets him leave home only for school while he awaits sentencing in the case.
A 15-year-old girl charged in the attack appeared in court alongside the teen boy, but has not entered a plea in the case.
Judge Briggs scolded the girl for skipping school and testing positive for marijuana. The girl was allowed to remain on the same 24-hour curfew as the boy, but the judge threatened to send her back to the city’s juvenile jail if she continued to violate her orders.
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.