A woman working as a delivery driver was robbed.
According to WJLA, the woman was riding her e-bike on the sidewalk when two people approached her. One suspect pointed a knife toward her stomach while a second suspect grabbed the e-bike, police said. A third act of the robbery saw one of the suspects snatch the woman’s iPhone right off the e-bike before the pair took off.
Police described the suspects as young males with thin builds dressed in all-black clothing, with one of them carrying the knife and the other wearing a red backpack. The two were last seen heading south on 4th Street SW, per the same report. The Metropolitan Police Department was the source of the report detailing the incident.
A Growing Pattern of Scrutiny Around E-Bikes in the District
The Oct. 18 robbery lands amid a broader conversation in Washington about the risks and misuse tied to rental e-bikes and scooters. The Washington Post has reported that reports of teenagers using rental vehicles to commit crimes have recently drawn attention in both traditional media and online, as the devices become more common across city sidewalks and bike lanes.
E-bikes have also become an increasingly important tool for the city’s delivery workforce. A pilot program run through D.C.’s Department of Transportation lets food-delivery workers use Whizz e-bikes and swap out depleted batteries at swap locations near the Wharf or in Adams Morgan, according to WTOP News. Two groups of 35 drivers each were selected to take part after applying through the Whizz app, and cyclists have logged about 15,000 deliveries through the program since it launched the previous summer, the station reported.
Southwest DC Has Seen Robbery Patterns Before
A separate MPD release also described a Southwest armed robbery in which additional suspects allegedly began forcibly robbing a victim after the victim and an initial suspect exited an apartment.
Robberies involving snatched phones and other quick grab-and-run tactics are not new to the District. A 2019 Washington Post report noted that three robberies reported in a single Saturday that year shared notable similarities in location and method, at a time when roughly 1,100 unarmed robberies had been reported citywide that year. It remains unclear whether the Oct. 18 incident is connected to any of these earlier cases or to the broader e-bike and scooter crime trend described by the Post, and no information has been released regarding the suspects’ identities or whether any arrests have followed.
Delivery drivers elsewhere in the region have also reported being targeted on the job. In Columbia, Maryland, a food-delivery driver reported being robbed while dropping off an order to a customer, according to Columbia, MD Patch. No further details have been released about the condition of the Southwest D.C. driver, her employer, or whether her e-bike and phone have been recovered.
