Four people were injured and one person died after a shooting in northwest Washington on Thursday morning, local police said.
Authorities identified the suspect as a “white male” who had been “contained”. Shortly after the press conference, the Associated Press and NBC News both reported that the suspect was dead, citing law enforcement officials.
Jeffery Carroll, the interim chief of police for the Metropolitan police department (MPD), told reporters that the department received a report of a shooting in a gym just before 8am local time at the 1500 block of 15th Street. He said officers were on the scene within 30 seconds.
The police said they located a man who had been shot, and then received multiple calls for additional gunshots and victims.
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Carroll said four people were shot and taken to hospital and one had died at the scene. Among those who were hospitalised, one was “in critical condition”.
“When officers got on the scene, they began canvassing, attempting to locate the suspect in this case,” Carroll said. “While they were on the scene, they were able to begin to clear the building where the shootings occurred.”
While clearing an apartment building on the block, Carroll noted that “gunshots rang out on the seventh floor, and since that time, we have determined the suspect had barricaded themselves in an apartment on the seventh floor of that building”. The emergency response team “responded to the scene as well as additional resources from many federal partners”.
He added: “Our negotiators with their emergency response team were also able to make contact with the suspect inside the apartment. They’ve been talking to him for over the past hour, again attempting to try to resolve the situation. Just moments ago, while communicating with that individual, officers heard a gunshot. As a response to that, officers forced entry into the apartment. When they did that, they located the suspect suffering from a gunshot wound.”
Police are “still evaluating that to make sure we clear the entire building” and “believe that the suspect is now contained in that location, and of course, murder services will be rendered as appropriate to that”.
The gunman was a member of the gym affected, which has been identified as Vida Fitness. Officials believe the suspect was in “some sort of a conflict with the apartment building, but we don’t have much more than that”.
Police said that they know that at least at “one point in time” the suspect had a handgun.
“We don’t know if there’s other weapons that are involved or not,” they said.
The mayor of Washington, Muriel Bowser, called the shooting a “senseless act of gun violence” and confirmed that the White House had been briefed.
The Washington police department urged the public to avoid the area.
A witness, James Spellman, told the Associated Press that he was at the gym a little after 8am when he heard shots being fired.
“Within seconds there was a man who fell to the ground, and a pool of blood came out,” Spellman said. “One gym member rushed to help him. He was instantly dead. He had been shot in the neck.”
Spellman said he and others ran out of the gym, and then they heard more gunfire in the area of 15th Street. He told the outlet that he heard about two shots fired in the gym and about five or six fired outside. – Guardian
