Via Shutterstock

Bloomingdale residents are turning to the Metropolitan Police Department to protect them from a spate of attacks by fruit-throwing youths. For more than a week, a group of kids, believed to be in their early teens, have been seen launching pieces of fruit at people walking through the neighborhood.

The first incident happened March 19 about 6:15 p.m., Commander Andy Solberg of MPD’s Fifth District writes in an email to the district email group that was also posted on Popville:

On Tuesday, March 19, at about 6:15 pm, we got a call that a group of young boys and girls were throwing items at a person near 2nd and W Sts., NW. We went but were unable to find a victim. While we were investigating this matter, we located a person in the 100 block of Adams St., NW, who said that a group of young boys and girls had used the steps to his basement apartment as a spot to gather, and when he told them to leave, they threw fruit at his window.

It was hardly an isolated incident, Solberg continues, and there have been several other recent assaults by youths, some of whom used objects more sturdy than fruit.

On Monday, officers responded to a report of a woman on near Second Street and Rhode Island Avenue NW being attacked by a group of four. Police arrested one and stopped the other three for questioning. All the suspects in the group are 11, 12, or 13 years old, Solberg writes. And last week, a Popville reader wrote in that their roommate was assaulted by a group of rock-throwing teens while walking home from the Shaw Metro station to Bloomingdale.