An 11-year-old was charged after a string of robberies. A 12-year old was charged in a number of carjackings and assaults. Those are just two of the crime sprees that came to an end this month in Washington, DC.

As soon as he confronted the masked youth who seemed to be trying to rob him with a gun last week on Irving Street in Northwest Washington, Ryan Cummins knew the assailant was young.

“When I shoved him, he weighed nothing,” Cummins said in an interview…

Police said the youth they arrested on Saturday in Cummins’s case and two nearby robberies is even younger: 11. He is among the youngest arrested in the District this year in an armed robbery…

The 11-year-old also was charged as a juvenile with armed robbery after police said two young males robbed a man of a bicycle near his home on Lamont Street NW on May 21. Police said the man at first refused his assailant’s demands, but complied when the 11-year-old pulled a gun from his fanny pack. The youth was charged with assault with a dangerous weapon in Cummins’s case and with robbery in a May 26 incident on Luray Place NW in which car keys were taken.

Cummins, the victim in that robbery, was shot in the leg last year. The person who shot him was an adult but for some reason prosecutors declined the case. “It’s amazingly frustrating,” Cummins told the Post.

An even more serious string of robberies and carjackings came to an end earlier this month. The suspect in that string of at least nine separate cases was 12-years-old.

The carjackings, robberies and assaults occurred between March 21 and April 29 and were concentrated in the Anacostia area, police said. Most incidents were after school hours, largely between 5 p.m. and midnight, though one robbery occurred just before 2:15 p.m. on a Tuesday. Police reports show that the 12-year-old acted alongside at least one other person in every incident.

In most of the carjackings, the suspects wielded guns, though no shots were fired, and in some cases it was unclear whether the 12-year-old or another person held the weapon. The judge noted the youth, who appeared in court with his mother sitting behind him, had not previously been arrested.

In one incident in March outside of Martha’s Table in Southeast, the youth forced a woman from her car and pushed her to the ground in an attempt to take her purse and keys, according to a police report. A few weeks later, police said in a report that the youth, wearing a full face covering, brandished a handgun, demanded a victim’s keys and phone, and drove off in his red Toyota Highlander. The victim’s 10-year-old cat was still in the car…

On April 25, the youth hit a woman in the head with a handgun or BB-gun as a group took her pants, shoes and cellphone on Elvans Road, then fled in her vehicle, D.C. Police Detective Jayme Kingsley testified in court Friday. Kingsley testified the victim in that said “the little boy” was her attacker.

The cat taken in the carjacking was never found. And there’s an update on this case. The suspect, who recently turned 13, was sent to a low-security youth detention center after his attorney successfully argued that there was no evidence against his client in 8 of the 9 incidents. He fled of course and the judge has issued a warrant for his arrest.

Llast month a pair of thieves aged 12 and 14 were arrested for another string of seven robberies. They arrived at the various locations in a car with the 12-year-old driving and then pulled guns during the robberies.

The worst case of all happened in neighboring Prince George’s County where a 15-year-old attempted to execute a 14-year-old on a school bus. By some miracle the gun refused to fire and the 14-year-old survived.

The U.S. Marshals Service Capital Area Regional Fugitive Task Force (CARFTF) took 15-year-old Kaden Dominique Holland, also known as “Baby K” into custody around 2:40 p.m. in the 6300 block of Baltimore Avenue in the Riverdale Park area without incident. Holland was alone at the time of the arrest, officials said.

Holland is charged with attempted first-degree murder, attempted second-degree murder, assault, and firearm offenses. Additional charges are pending, according to Aziz.

“Baby K” is also a suspect in another murder. He will be charged as an adult so he’s probably going to prison for life.

But you have to wonder what is happening that kids, who aren’t even teenagers yet in some cases, are involved in violent carjackings as if that were a normal thing for a child to do. Where are the parents of these kids? Why don’t they have any idea what their children are doing? No one seems to be drawing conclusions about what is motivating this surge in crime by very young people but it would not surprise me to learn this is all connected to TikTok and the Kia Boys trend I wrote about recently. Basically it’s bored kids trying to one-up each other on social media with no concern for who gets hurt in the process.