Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) was carjacked by three armed attackers in Washington D.C. on Monday evening but was unharmed, the representative’s office has said.
Mr. Cuellar’s chief of staff, Jacob Hochberg, released a statement on the incident Monday night. “As Congressman Cuellar was parking his car this evening, 3 armed assailants approached the Congressman and stole his vehicle. Luckily, he was not harmed and is working with local law enforcement.”
Mr. Hochberg said police had since recovered Mr. Cuellar’s vehicle.
The Washington Post reported that the robbery happened in the city’s Navy Yard area—about a mile from the U.S. Capitol.
Monday’s carjacking was the second assault on a member of Congress in the District of Columbia this year. In February, Rep. Angie Craig (D-Minn.) was assaulted in an elevator in her apartment building.
She suffered bruising, but managed to escape her assailant when the elevator doors opened.
In June, 26-year-old Kendrid Khalil Hamlin pleaded guilty in Ms. Craig’s case to charges of assaulting both a member of Congress and law enforcement officers. Mr. Hamlin had also been charged with assaulting two officers as they attempted to arrest him on the day of his attack on Ms. Craig.
According to the Justice Department, Mr. Hamlin had at least 25 bench warrants for alleged crimes committed inside the District and neighboring communities, as well as 12 prior convictions, but received only brief incarceration sentences for his violent crimes—if any at all.
“It wasn’t even in every instance that he got 10 days or 30 days,” Ms. Craig told CBS in an interview, as she criticized D.C.’s soft-on-crime policies. “Many times, the charges were completely dropped before any justice was achieved at all.”
“I was assault no. 13 on his record,” she said, vowing to “do everything in my power to make sure there’s not a 14, a 15, a 20.”
In March, one of Sen. Rand Paul’s staffers was brutally stabbed upon leaving a restaurant in Washington, apparently without provocation.
The staffer suffered life-threatening injuries that required multiple surgeries.
The assailant was later identified as 42-year-old Glynn Neal, a convicted felon who had just been released from prison the day before after serving a 12-year sentence.
“I wonder whether Washington, D.C., should be listed on dangerous places to travel like we do at the State Department for foreign countries,” Sen. Paul said at the time. “Many of our major cities are really going to rot and ruin.”
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
