A 53-year-old man riding his 2025 moped near Bernard Drive and Georgetown Road in South Baltimore was held up at gunpoint on Monday afternoon, forced to hand over his vehicle to an armed suspect who then fled the scene. Southern District officers were close behind, and within a short time they had the suspect in custody, still on the stolen moped.
According to Baltimore Police
, officers responded to the intersection at approximately 3:20 p.m. Monday after receiving a report of an armed carjacking. When they arrived, they found the victim, who told them a man had pointed a handgun at him and demanded his moped. The victim surrendered the vehicle, and the suspect fled the location.
Notably, the suspect wasn't driving a car of his own to make his getaway — he had arrived at the scene riding a Lime bicycle, according to the same police account. Lime operates its GPS-tracked e-bikes and e-scooters in Baltimore under an official dockless vehicle permit the city awarded the company in June 2024, part of a shared-mobility program that saw riders log more than 1.3 million dockless vehicle trips in 2023, per the City of Baltimore.
Suspect Caught Riding the Stolen Moped
Responding officers didn't have to search far. Police say they located the suspect still riding the stolen moped and took him into custody at the scene. He was identified as 23-year-old Dontay Friday, who was transported to Central Booking and charged with armed carjacking, armed robbery, and various handgun violations, per the police account.
Friday was taken to Central Booking for processing, according to GlobalTel. The intersection where the carjacking occurred is in South Baltimore. Southern District officers responded to the call.
What Maryland's Carjacking Law Means for the Case
Under Maryland Criminal Law Code Ann. § 3-405, armed carjacking is a felony punishable by up to 30 years in prison, with judges authorized to impose sentences consecutive to other charges stemming from the same event, according to Westlaw's statutory text. The statute's subsection (f) also closes off a potential defense: a defendant's lack of intent to permanently deprive an owner of a vehicle is not a valid legal argument against a carjacking charge. State law focuses on the forcible, unauthorized taking of control, regardless of how long a suspect intended to keep the vehicle.
Maryland regulations also require that mopeds and motor scooters driven on public roads be titled, insured, and display an MVA-issued decal, per the Maryland Insurance Administration. The available account does not detail how Maryland defines mopeds or what operating permits may be required.
A Broader Pattern of Carjackings in Baltimore
This case lands amid attention to juvenile carjackings in Baltimore. Local police reporting cited by Fox Baltimore discussed a trend involving juvenile carjackings in the city.
The available sources do not establish a citywide robbery clearance rate, a national benchmark, or findings from a University of Pennsylvania study about Baltimore's Group Violence Reduction Strategy. Violent vehicle thefts like Monday's incident remain a focus for local law enforcement.
The arrest echoes an earlier case in March 2025, when four teens faced charges in an unarmed carjacking of an elderly woman's vehicle in South Baltimore. Formal bail determinations and any grand jury indictment in Friday's case would be expected to move through the Central Booking system in the coming days.
