WASHINGTON – Adam Ahmed, 38, of Chantilly, Virginia, was sentenced today to six years in prison for kidnapping his former girlfriend related to an incident that began in Manassas, Virginia on May 10, 2024, and ended in Northeast Washington, D.C., on May 11, 2024, announced U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro. Ahmed was convicted by a jury on June 12, 2025, following a trial in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. In addition to the prison term, Ahmed was also sentenced to 42 months for strangulation, 28 months on each of two counts of felony threats, and 180 days for assault, all to run concurrently.
According to the government’s evidence, on May 9, 2024, Ahmed was arrested in Virginia on multiple warrants for protective order violations and assault charges against his former girlfriend. The next day, on May 10, 2024, the victim got into Ahmed’s car outside her home in Manassas, Virginia, believing that they would sit in her building parking lot and talk about their relationship. Instead, the defendant took off, driving erratically. Ahmed told the victim that they were both “going to die tonight,” and that if she was going to charge him with abduction, he was going to do it.
The defendant drove onto I-66 and took the victim into the District, where he repeatedly assaulted her and threatened to kill her. After several hours of terrorizing the victim, Ahmed told her that he was going to drive her somewhere no one would find her. When he stopped the car, he climbed over her and strangled her with both hands until she could not breathe. While strangling her, he bit her, putting his whole mouth over hers.
He started driving again, eventually stopping at a Shell gas station on Nannie Helen Burroughs Avenue in Northeast. At one point, Ahmed walked away from the car, and the victim tried to escape; however, Ahmed picked her up and forced her back into the car. A passerby on the street saw the defendant hitting the victim and turned into the gas station parking lot, rescuing the victim and calling 911. During the course of trial two expert witnesses spoke about the unique dangers inherit in strangulation, and violence in intimate partner violence relationships, respectively.
Strangulation is widely recognized as one of the most lethal forms of intimate partner violence, as a major strangulation study in San Diego found surviving domestic violence “victims are much more likely to die later if their abuser has strangled them.” The study also noted that “…..the odds of becoming a victim of attempted homicide increased by 700%, and the odds of becoming a homicide victim increased by 800%, among women who had been strangled by their partner.” The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia’s Sex Offense and Domestic Violence Section has charged well over 100 acts of felony strangulation since the D.C. Council created it as a criminal offense under D.C. Code 22-404.04, which went into effect in July of 2023.
Joining in the announcement was Chief Pamela Smith of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD). In announcing the verdict, U.S. Attorney Pirro and Chief Smith commended the work of the officers and detectives at the Metropolitan Police Department. They also acknowledged the efforts of those who worked on the case from the U.S.
Attorney’s Office, including Assistant U.S. Attorney John Scannell; Victim Witness Service Coordinators Katina Adams-Washington and Tonya Jones; Supervisor Leif Hickling of the Trial Graphics Unit; Paralegal Specialists Cynthia Muhammad and Veronica Yale; Appellate Assistant U.S. Attorneys Bryan Han and Dan Lenerz; Victim/Witness Advocate ShaDonna Brooks-Ferere; Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda Swanson, and former Assistant U.S.
Attorney Trisha Jhunjhnuwala.