Prince George’s County investigators are looking to identify four people caught on camera assaulting an older woman in the Capitol Heights neighborhood in an attempt to steal her car last month, police said.
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At a news conference Thursday afternoon, Prince George’s County Police Chief Malik Aziz called the attack “truly disturbing” and “vicious.”
On March 29, about 6:40 p.m., Aziz said, four people approached a woman in her late 60s as she returned home from running errands. The woman was “pushed to the ground” and the four people demanded the keys to her car, Aziz said. They searched her pockets and “ripped” the items she was holding out of her hands, he said.
The four perpetrators fled after they got her keys, but one of them chased and tackled the woman to the ground again when she ran to a next-door neighbor for help, Aziz said.
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The woman could be heard screaming in the video. She suffered two broken bones in the incident, Aziz said. The perpetrators left the area without taking her vehicle, he said.
VIDEO: Detectives release video of four suspects who assaulted a senior citizen in an attempted carjacking. Read more: https://t.co/hnvpMdrIAa pic.twitter.com/E4bvd3J9xE
— PGPDNEWS (@PGPDNews) April 7, 2022
Police could not confirm whether the assailants were men or women based on the video. Aziz said the video was released to solicit help from the community in identifying the four assailants.
“All senior citizens here deserve the right to be treated with dignity and respect,” Aziz said.
Police locally and nationwide have expressed alarm at a growing number of carjackings over the past two years.
In February, a 71-year-old man who was working as a ride-hail driver, Abdul Rauf Khan, was fatally shot in a carjacking in Temple Hills, Md. A 17-year-old was arrested and charged with murder and carjacking.
According to data from the department, 132 carjackings have been reported in the county this year. Police have arrested 54 people, 37 of whom are juveniles.
A carjacking interdiction unit was created last year to combat and investigate carjackings, county police said. There has been an increase in the carjacking case closure rate from 33 percent to nearly 50 percent.