MURDER – The carjacker who shot dead former Trump Administration official Mike Gill during a nightlong crime spree was arrested over a car crash a year earlier.
The Murder Incident
Artell Cunningham, 28, was gunned down by police about 4.30am last Tuesday after he carjacked numerous vehicles and killed two people.
His first victim was Gill, a married father of three who was shot on K Street NW in Washington DC about 5.45pm last Monday and died in hospital on Saturday.
Gill served as chief operating officer of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission during Donald Trump’s time in the White House.
Then 90 minutes later
Cunningham just 90 minutes later shot dead father-of-two Alberto Vasquez Jr, 35, in a separate carjacking nearby, then stole more cars at gunpoint.
He was killed by two New Carrollton Police officers who cornered him on the northeast outskirts of DC’s Maryland suburbs.
Cunningham was memorialized by his sister Atia La’Shae, who replied ‘yes, very much so’ to a friend who wrote ‘he will be missed’ on her post.
Jeffery Carroll, the assistant chief of DC police, said Cunningham had a criminal history and appeared to be going through a mental health crisis at the time.
Arrest records indicate Cunningham was arrested on April 8, 2021, for disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, obstructing officers, and failing to obey police instructions.
Then on September 24, 2022, he was arrested for driving an uninsured vehicle and fleeing the scene of a car accident he was involved in.
What Officials Say
Washington DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb told residents concerned by the skyrocketing crime rate that his department could not ‘prosecute and arrest our way out’ of the problem.
He was speaking during Understanding Juvenile Carjacking: A Panel Discussion, that discussed a rise in violent crime that was plaguing the nation’s capital.
Schwalb said if residents wanted to be ‘safer in the long run’ they needed to focus on preventing crime, not just arresting after the fact.
‘We as a city and a community need to be much more focused on prevention and surrounding young people and their families with resources if we want to be safer in the long run,’ he said.
‘We cannot prosecute and arrest our way out of it.’
