White House shooting: White House attack foiled? Man with gun shot by security agents near Washington Monument at a time when President Donald Trump was holding business event
The unidentified man attempted to flee when uniformed officers from the Secret Service approached him. The man fired at officers, who returned fire, Quinn said. The alleged gunman was transported to a local hospital. Quinn said he had no information about the suspect’s condition.
Emergency personnel also transported a child who was shot but not seriously injured, Quinn said. The bystander, who was taken to the hospital, could not say with certainty that he was shot by the suspect’s gun, Quinn said. “Let’s leave that to the doctors,” he said, but noted that “investigators believe he was shot by the suspect.”
Quinn said Washington, D.C. police will investigate the officer-involved shooting.
After emergency crews responded to the shooting near the White House, where President Donald Trump was holding a small business event, the Secret Service encouraged people to avoid the area.
The White House was briefly closed while authorities investigated the incident. The Secret Service took the journalists who were outside into the briefing room, and Trump continued his event uninterrupted.
The incident came a week after a gunman tried to storm the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner with a gun and knives, drawing a large police presence. Cole Tomas Allen was charged in the incident in which a Secret Service officer was shot even though he was wearing a bulletproof vest and was not seriously injured.
Quinn said it is not yet known whether the incident on Monday was related to Trump. “I’m not going to speculate on that,” Quinn said. “I don’t know if it was directed to the president, but we’ll find out.”
