Arlington man arrested for carjacking woman with air-soft gun

An Arlington man is in jail after police say he carjacked a woman using a fake gun.

Police say it doesn't matter if the gun was fake. If the victim thinks it's real, the crime is still considered a felony.

Jesus Adrian Hernandez, 23, was arrested for carjacking a woman on her way to work. The SWAT team had to be called out to arrest him at a mobile home park.

Police found a gun they thought was real. It turned out to be an air-soft gun that sells at retail stores.

“This is really on the rise. What's so scary it's so easy to buy these type of replica guns,” said Lt. Chris Cook with Arlington police. “It's not confined here to Arlington. It's happening around the country.”

On Wednesday, Baltimore police shot and seriously wounded a 13-year-old boy who was walking down the street with a BB gun that looked like a semiautomatic pistol. Police say they fired when he didn't follow an order to drop the gun.

"I guarantee you pull that out on an officer and you're probably going to be involved in a deadly force encounter,” said Cook.

Earlier this month, a 15-year-old boy pulled a BB gun on an Arlington officer that looked remarkably like the officer's service weapon. The officer was able to disarm the teenager without having to draw his weapon.

“This is just another thing that our cops are having to deal with,” said Cook.

Since January, Arlington police say they've had about a dozen cases in which robberies and other crimes were committed by people using fake guns. Police want new laws to fix the problem and changes in how the guns are made.