David Zanders, aged 23, has been sentenced to 180 months in federal prison for a kidnapping and a subsequent carjacking incident that occurred on May 1, 2022. The sentence was announced by U.S. Attorney Edward R. Martin Jr., FBI Special Agent in Charge Sean Ryan of the Washington Field Office Criminal and Cyber Division, and Chief Pamela Smith of the Metropolitan Police Department.
Zanders entered a guilty plea on November 1, 2024, to charges of one count of kidnapping and one count of carjacking in the U.S. District Court. Alongside the 180-month prison term, the Honorable Royce C. Lamberth ordered that Zanders serve five years of supervised release.
Court documents reveal that in the early morning hours of May 1, 2022, Zanders and an accomplice kidnapped two males outside a nightclub on Florida Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C. The two men, under the guise of being Uber drivers, lured the victims into Zanders’ vehicle. Zanders then stopped on a neighborhood street, threatened the victims with a firearm, and stole their phones and money. The victims were then taken to various ATMs, where Zanders attempted to withdraw money using their credit cards.
One victim managed to escape at a gas station in Washington D.C. as Zanders and the accomplice were looking for a cash machine. Later, Zanders transported the remaining victim to a supermarket in Maryland, where they withdrew money from an ATM using the victim's card before eventually releasing him.
That evening, Zanders met with associates on Longfellow Street, NW, under the pretext of selling a vehicle. However, this meeting was a setup to steal the buyer's car. When new victims arrived in a Dodge Charger, Zanders brandished a gun, demanded phones, money, and car keys. An associate drove away with the Dodge Charger, while Zanders and others fled in separate vehicles.
Zanders was taken into custody on November 18, 2022, and has been detained since. The investigation was carried out by the MPD’s Carjacking Task Force and the FBI’s Washington Field Office’s Violent Crimes Task Force, with assistance from the Prince George's County Police Department.
The case prosecution involved Assistant U.S. Attorneys Shehzad Akhtar and Cameron Tepfer, with former Special Assistant U.S. Attorney Lauren Renaud, and was initially investigated and charged by Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Strong.