By Adam Pagnucco.
One of the benefits of living in District 18 is attendance at District 18 night, an annual event sponsored by the district’s state legislators. This year’s event, which occurred on Sunday, was held at one of MoCo’s best restaurants, the awesome Hollywood East Cafe at Westfield Wheaton mall.
In addition to the usual dignitaries and muckety-mucks, this year’s District 18 night almost had a couple uninvited guests:
Armed carjackers.
Around 3:30 PM on Sunday, multiple crime trackers on Twitter reported an armed carjacking at Westfield Wheaton in the Macy’s garage – an event I independently confirmed. That’s at the entrance to Hollywood East. District 18 night was scheduled at 4 PM. Multiple sources who arrived early told me that they saw a swarm of police cars in the garage.
Carjackings are becoming common in Wheaton, Silver Spring and elsewhere in the county. Earlier this month, the MoCo Show reported on another carjacking at Westfield Wheaton. This one also occurred on a Sunday afternoon around 3:30 PM. The Twitter sources above allege that the mall has seen seven carjackings since December. NBC4 recently reported on three carjackings in Silver Spring in two weeks and another one was thwarted because the carjacker could not drive stick shift. (Oh the criminals these days!)
This time around, the carjackers came close to some pretty prominent people. The District 18 night was well attended and, in addition to the district’s state legislators, multiple sources report that County Executive Marc Elrich and State Senator Will Smith, who chairs the senate’s Judicial Proceedings Committee, were there. If the carjackers had shown up around 45 minutes later, they could have grabbed a sweet ride – maybe one with General Assembly license plates.
As these kinds of crimes become so routine that the local press can’t keep up with all of them, here is a question: if the Jawando-Mink bill to limit traffic stops were to become law, how would that impact the ability of police to seize weapons from vehicles and prevent carjackings?