VIDEO: Piano teacher mugged moments after giving lesson at Northwest DC home

WASHINGTON – Police are searching for the young thieves who mugged a piano teacher on her way home from a lesson in Northwest D.C. Wednesday night.  

The attack happened around 7 p.m. at the corner of Piney Branch Road and Hamilton Street, NW, in Sixteenth Street Heights. The victim had just left her student’s house around the corner after their piano lesson.

Home security camera footage shared by neighbors and given to police captured the four robbery suspects just moments before the attack.  

The video shows the suspects approach the victim on foot and pounce on her. After threatening and robbing the victim, they run back down the street. The attack was caught from multiple angles.  

D.C. police say the piano teacher was robbed of her cell phone and purse, which had her driver’s license and a debit card inside. 

She told police that the teens threatened to kill her unless she gave up her phone’s password.  

Residents believe this is not the first time these teens have committed a robbery in this neighborhood. It was at least the third such robbery in this neighborhood in the past couple of weeks, according to D.C. police. 

In one case, shots were fired. Four young men wearing all black are the suspects in at least one of those other crimes.

“It seems like the group of boys does not discriminate. They’ll mug a grandma. They’ll mug anybody, it seems like, that they have the opportunity to corner. It was pretty shocking,” said Mingo Roberts.

Roberts tells FOX 5 that the victim is his daughter’s piano teacher. He says she’s a grad student and was just heading to a Metro bus stop up on 16th Street after leaving their house.

“She left our house after the lesson was over and she came back to the house frantic panicked. She was knocking on the door and once we realized what happened and we knew she was OK, my mind immediately went to my mom and my kids and them having just an hour, less than an hour before, walking down to our house,” Roberts said. 

Roberts says his parents live in this same neighborhood and often take walks, including at night.  

“I’m not sure if there’s any affiliation between any of these but it’s very unsettling,” Roberts said.

The latest statistics show violent crime is down in the city but Roberts says stats don’t matter when it happens to you or somebody you know and care about.