Jeanine Pirro, the United States attorney for the District of Columbia, announced on Friday that two teenagers have been arrested in connection with the killing of a congressional intern this summer.
The two 17-year-olds face first-degree murder charges and will be tried as adults, not juveniles. Investigators are still searching for a third suspect.
In late June, Eric Tarpinian-Jachym was fatally shot in Washington. Authorities don’t believe he was the intended target.
“He was an innocent bystander who was caught in a violent act that was not meant for him,” Pirro said at a press conference, joined by Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser and Metropolitan Police Department Chief Pamela Smith. “His death is a stark reminder of how fragile life is and how violence too often visits us in the nation’s capital.”
Pirro called on Congress to “change the law” and stop the Council of the District of Columbia from “coddl[ing] young criminals.”
“The D.C. Council has coddled young criminals for years. They reject mandatory minimums that the law requires. They don’t force judges to follow the law,” she said. “They have something called the youth rehabilitation and the incarceration reduction, as well as record sealing. Everything we do, the D.C. Council is looking to change to benefit the criminal.
“We’re going to need Congress to change the law, and I believe that if there’s any case that calls for it, it is this case, that makes it clear that these young punks who are on the street with guns, shooting at each other, killing innocent people, they need to be brought into my system and not in the family court system for rehabilitation. Because they’ve been in that system more than once, and I don’t think they’ve been rehabilitated,” she added.
Before his death, Tarpinian-Jachym was a summer intern for Rep. Ron Estes (R-KS). He was a rising senior at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he majored in finance with a political science minor.
A woman and a 16-year-old boy were also shot, but they survived.
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Attorney General Pam Bondi weighed in on social media about the arrests of the two minors, thanking the FBI for its work in catching the suspects.
More charges are expected after the case is presented to a grand jury, Pirro added.