File photo: MrWalkr / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
A 23-year-old Dallas man walked out of a house on Hollywood Avenue in Silver Spring, Maryland, carrying a “privately manufactured firearm” and hit a plainclothes officer in the head with it, Montgomery County police said, according to NBC4 Washington. The officer had approached a Corvette that was reported stolen in Anne Arundel County on Oct. 1, 32 days before the confrontation, police said. The man, Isaiah Armstrong-Smith, is charged with first-degree assault, possession of a stolen vehicle and multiple firearms offenses, and is held without bond. Those are police allegations, and no court has ruled on them.
A stolen Corvette, a drone and a driveway on Hollywood Avenue
A Montgomery County 4th District officer spotted the Corvette southbound on New Hampshire Avenue at about 10:45 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 2, according to police accounts reported by NBC4 and The MoCo Show. Fox 5 DC reported that a drone followed the car into a driveway in the 900 block of Hollywood Avenue, where two people got out and went into the house.
A plainclothes officer then approached the car. Police say Armstrong-Smith came out of the house and struck the officer in the head with the firearm, then ran as more officers arrived. They caught him in the 900 block of Winhall Way with a K-9 unit and a Prince George’s County police helicopter, The MoCo Show reported. He had already thrown the gun away, police said, and detectives found it later in the 1000 block of Hollywood Avenue. Fox 5 and The MoCo Show both described it as an AR-style pistol.
A 22-year-old Silver Spring man, whom police believe was driving the Corvette, was arrested at the first scene and released pending further investigation. He has not been named and, in the reports I reviewed, has not been charged.
Every account I found traces back to the department. None includes the charging document, the officer’s condition, the specific firearms counts, or a statement from Armstrong-Smith’s attorney. I could not retrieve the police department’s own release or a court docket entry, so the case status here is what police reported on Nov. 4.
What a privately made gun adds in Maryland
Maryland’s serial-number law, Public Safety Article §5-703, covers guns like this one. Since March 1, 2023, a person may not possess a firearm that lacks a federally compliant serial number or an approved alternative marking. A possession violation is a misdemeanor with a maximum of two years in prison and a $10,000 fine, and the statute says each violation is a separate crime. Buying, receiving, selling or transferring an unfinished frame or receiver without a serial number is a felony carrying up to five years.
Maryland State Police guidance says a person who makes a frame or receiver from raw materials must have a federally licensed dealer serialize it within 30 days, and that registering it with the agency is free. A kit-built gun that skipped that step is untraceable in the state’s terms. Police have not said which firearms statutes Armstrong-Smith is charged under, so whether §5-703 is among them is unconfirmed.
Where the sentencing exposure sits
The Corvette is why police were in the driveway. The assault count is where the exposure is: under Criminal Law §3-202, first-degree assault is a felony punishable by up to 25 years, and the statute lists assault with a firearm among the ways to commit it. Whether a gun used to strike someone fits that provision is a question for prosecutors and a judge, and I have not seen the charging document that would show their theory. I also have not confirmed the penalty for the stolen-vehicle count.
Police have not said whether the Corvette went back to its owner. Stolen-car owners in Maryland can face paperwork of their own; Backfire News reported on a Baltimore owner whose stolen car produced a $2,398 insurance-lapse notice from the Motor Vehicle Administration. And the driveway is a familiar place for these encounters: an off-duty New Jersey police captain was knocked down trying to stop two men from backing his father’s Infiniti out of one.
What happens next
No court date has been reported, and Armstrong-Smith remains held without bond. Whether the 22-year-old driver is charged depends on an investigation police have not described.
Should Maryland stack a separate possession charge for a homemade, unserialized gun on top of an assault count, or is the assault charge enough?
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