WASHINGTON — DC US Attorney Jeanine Pirro announced Friday that two teenagers have been charged with first-degree murder and will be tried as adults for the slaying of a congressional intern in June — and that a third suspect is still being pursued.
Eric Tarpinian-Jachym, 21, was gunned down July 1 about a mile northeast of the White House in a driveby shooting. He was not suspected to be the intended target.
“Eric didn’t deserve to be gunned down, and the system failed him — the system that felt that juveniles needed to be coddled. And it’s bad not to be gunned down on any street, but to be gunned down in our nation’s capital is an outrage,” Pirro said.
“The DC Council thinks that these kids need to be protected. They don’t need to be protected. They need to be made accountable, and we need to be protected… This killing underscores why we need the authority to prosecute these younger kids, because they’re not kids, they’re criminals.”
Tarpinian-Jachym, a rising senior at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the Isenberg School of Management, was working as an intern for Rep. Ron Estes (R-Kan.).
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