Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor speaks during a panel discussion at the winter meeting of the National Governors Association, Friday, Feb. 23, 2024, in Washington (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein).
A 19-year-old man in Washington, D.C., will spend the next decade behind bars for attempting to carjack two deputy U.S. Marshals who were working a security detail for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
U.S. District Court Judge Richard J. Leon this week ordered Kentrell Flowers to serve a sentence of 120 months in a federal correctional facility for the crime, which ended with one of the deputies shooting him in the face.
Leon handed down the sentence after Flowers in February pleaded guilty to one count of using, carrying, possessing, and brandishing a firearm during a crime of violence. In addition to his incarceration, Flowers will also be required to serve five years of supervised release.
According to court documents filed in Washington, D.C., federal court, the incident took place at about 1:17 a.m. on July 5, 2024, in the 2100 block of 11th Street Northwest, which is just outside of Sotomayor’s home. Two deputies were parked in separate unmarked U.S. government vehicles when a silver minivan “stopped directly next to” one of them.
“As the silver van stopped, an individual later identified as Kentrell Flowers, got out of the van, approached the Complainant’s driver’s door, and pointed a firearm directly at the [deputy] through the front driver’s side window,” the criminal complaint states. “The [deputy] pulled out his department issued firearm and fired approximately four times at Defendant Flowers through the window, striking Flowers in the mouth.”
Flowers then “fell to the ground’ and the deputies provided him with first aid. At some point during the incident, the second deputy also fired on Flowers, but did not hit him, the DOJ said in a news release.
Meanwhile, authorities said that the silver van in which Flowers had been riding was seen traveling northbound on 11th Street Northwest. A second suspect who had exited the van fled the area on foot.
One of the deputies grabbed the gun Flowers had been holding and later identified it as a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson. The weapon had no rounds chambered and eight rounds remaining in the 13-round capacity magazine.
Detectives with the Metropolitan Police Department later discovered that the silver van used in the attempted carjacking had been reported stolen.
Neither the complaint nor the news release mentions Sotomayor by name, but a spokesperson for the Secret Service later confirmed that the deputies were “part of the unit protecting the residence of U.S. Supreme Court justices,” according to reports from The New York Times and Politico. There was no evidence to indicate that Sotomayor was targeted in the crime.
