David Garber and his roommates’ Christmas party was still going strong early Saturday morning despite the snowfall when four masked men stormed into their Anacostia row house, screaming and waving a handgun.
“Give us everything!” the men yelled. “Empty your [expletive] pockets!”
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The partygoers scattered. Some guests escaped through the back door; some huddled in a corner; others fell to the floor. Garber posted his account on his blog Anacostia Now, and agreed to recount it to The Washington Examiner.
That’s when Garber stepped up to the masked party-crashers.
“Dude, put your gun down,” Garber said over the yells of the gunman.
At least one man had a weapon. The others acted like they did. The gunman, in purple houndstooth scarf, ski goggles and gray jeans, was “stylish” compared with the typical street hood. Garber thought it was a joke.
The gunman knocked the drink out of Garber’s hands then threatened to put a bullet in his brain. Garber realized that the robbers were real.
“Are you serious? This is a Christmas party,” Garber said, refusing to hand over his possessions.
The gunman thought about it for a second, than asked for the liquor. Garber showed him the refreshments, but the robber didn’t seem impressed.
As the men walked out, the gunman turned to the guests and said, “Merry Christmas, b-tches!”
Said Garber: “This should just show what huge idiots these guys were.”
The robbers made off with the wallets and possessions of about 15 guests and the iPod and speakers that provided the soundtrack for the party. At one point, a guest was pistol-whipped in the head.
Garber, a 26-year-old real estate investor helping to renovate the up-and-coming historic Anacostia neighborhood, said he was acting on adrenaline more than the booze when he confronted the gunman. He was angry to see his guests scared in his own house and upset that his friends would think poorly about his neighborhood.
Police quickly arrived and the guests stuck around to give statements, but “the party was definitely over by then,” Garber said.
The robbers were described as four black males in their early 20s, one light-skinned. At least two of them hopped in a vehicle at the top of the hill in the 1500 block of V Street SE.
In a text message to Garber, D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier vowed to send more police to the neighborhood and capture the robbers.
“It is sad that some criminals are not getting the message. But I assure you we are going to keep sending it,” she wrote. “We will work diligently to apprehend these guys.”
