Rep. Henry Cuellar is back at work following a traumatizing experience of being carjacked by three armed attackers outside the Capitol Monday night.
“I do have a black belt, but I recognize when you have three guns — I looked at one with a gun, another with a gun a third one behind me — so they said they wanted my car, I said, ‘Sure,’” he told reporters Tuesday, per NBC Washington. “You’ve got to keep calm in those situations. And then they took off.”
What happened to Rep. Cuellar when he was carjacked in D.C.?
Cuellar, a Democrat, was not harmed by the incident. He was parking his car at an apartment complex in the Navy Yard neighborhood with a sushi order when three men in ski masks approached his vehicle and stole it, The New York Times reported.
“What really got me upset was they took my sushi, but anyway, that’s something else,” he joked with reporters Tuesday, per CNN.
He represents a Texas district that spans from the Rio Grande to the San Antonio suburbs and was staying in Washington, D.C., for the week. The attackers took his Toyota, iPad and iPhone, which ended up leading police to find the car using the tracking device from his phone, per the Times.
Was the carjacking of the congressman targeted?
From the interaction, Cuellar said he doesn’t believe the assailants knew who he was or that it seemed like a targeted attack against an American politician, according to CNN.
Violent crime has been on the rise in the capital city — it’s on track to “record the most homicides in two decades,” the Times reported. Carjackings are even more on the rise, with 753 in the city so far in 2023 compared to 485 carjackings in all of last year.