Two 15-year-old suspects have been arrested in connection with an attempted unarmed carjacking in Washington, D.C., by a group of perpetrators in which a 19-year-old man, identified by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk as a former Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employee, was assaulted, according to police.
The victim who was assaulted was Edward Coristine, according to an incident report provided by the Metropolitan Police Department. Coristine worked under Musk at DOGE until June, when Musk left the Trump administration, sources familiar with Coristine’s employment told ABC News.
The attempted carjacking unfolded early Sunday in northwest Washington, D.C., according to a police statement. Coristine and a woman were standing next to their car on Swann Street, several blocks from Logan Circle, when they were allegedly accosted by the multiple suspects, according to police.
“The suspects demanded the victim’s vehicle and then assaulted one of the victims,” according to the police statement.
A police cruiser arrived as the assault was in progress, prompting the suspects to flee on foot, authorities said. Officers on the scene were able to quickly catch two of them, a boy and a girl, according to police.
“One of the victims was treated on scene by DC Fire and EMS for injuries sustained in the assault,” according to the police statement, which adds that “multiple suspects remain outstanding.”
The juvenile suspects, both from Hyattsville, Maryland, were arrested on charges of unarmed carjacking, police said.
In a post on Tuesday on his social media platform, President Trump posted a photo of Coristine apparently taken after the attempted carjacking, showing him sitting on the ground, shirtless, with his face and body stained with what appears to be blood.
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Multiple ABC News attempts to contact Coristine were not immediately successful.
Trump said in his post that the incident showed that “crime in Washington, D.C., is totally out of control.” The president also suggested that minors involved in such crimes should be prosecuted as adults, “starting at 14.”
“If D.C. doesn’t get its act together, and quickly, we will have no choice but to take Federal control of the City, and run this City how it should be run, and put criminals on notice that they’re not going to get away with it anymore,” Trump said in his post.
Statistics from the Metropolitan Police Department show that violent crime in the nation’s capital has fallen 26% in the first seven months of this year compared to the same period in 2024. Carjackings in the city are also down 38% this year compared to last year, according to the statistics.
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Coristine, who gained notoriety for his age and going by the online nickname “Big Balls,” worked across multiple top agencies as a member of Musk’s DOGE team, including the General Services Administration, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Department of Education, and the Department of Health and Human Services.
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In a post on the social media site X, Musk shared Trump’s social media post and wrote that the former DOGE employee was assaulted when he came to the defense of the female carjacking victim. Musk claimed that the former DOGE employee, whom he didn’t identify, was beaten after a “dozen young men tried to assault a woman in her car at night in DC.”
