WASHINGTON — A teenage girl is in custody and another teen girl is dead after a crash involving two carjacked cars in Northeast D.C. early Thursday.
Officers with the Metropolitan Police Department responded to Saratoga Avenue Northeast and Brentwood Road Northeast, just off of Rhode Island Avenue Northeast, around 2:30 a.m. after a call about a major crash.
Police confirmed to WUSA9 that both vehicles were carjacked.
Prince George's County Police confirmed Thursday afternoon that one of the two carjacked vehicles was stolen from a rideshare driver and their passenger in Capitol Heights Wednesday evening. They said they're looking for three males and one female who were responsible for that carjacking.
DC Police said when they arrived at the crash scene Thursday morning, they discovered a teenage girl who had died lying inside one of the cars. They also arrested another teenage girl who had survived the crash.
“The young lady that was arrested… she jumped down and just started crying, 'I don't want to go back to jail,'" one man who lives in the apartment complex next to the crash and asked not to be identified said. "So that means she's been in jail. So it was another one to get caught, get locked up, got put back out and resorted back to the same thing.”
Police are still looking for others who were in one of the vehicles who hopped out of the cars and ran away after the crash.
The neighbor who talked to WUSA9 discovered Thursday morning that his car was damaged in the crash, the driver's side door crumpled in, window broken, and glass strewn all over the driver's seat.
“I'm just glad I wasn't inside the car," he said. "My neighbor took the brunt of it. He worked hard for that truck.”
One of the cars had rammed into his neighbor's jeep, which hit his Mustang as they sat in the parking lot behind their apartment complex.
The driver's side of the jeep melted from the fire caused by the crash.
An initial investigation showed that the two carjacked vehicles did not crash into each other. It is unclear at this time what caused the separate crashes.
At the scene, one of the vehicles was seen overturned on Saratoga Avenue and Brentwood Avenue Northeast, while the other vehicle was on 13th Street Northeast and Brentwood Road Northeast at the bottom of the hill.
No additional information has been released about the teenage girl they arrested, including where she is from, her age, and her connection to the initial carjackings.
“[It's] another sad day in DC," the neighbor said. "Kids are hurting.”
This neighbor is no stranger to sad days.
Two years ago, his previous Mustang was totaled “by somebody who just stole the truck knocked it two cars up from the place it was parked onto the sidewalk.”
At this stage of the investigation, police are not able to say if the two carjackings are connected.