Woman with child tries to breach Capitol, White House
Police say there was no indication that the unarmed woman, who was killed by Capitol Police, was part of a larger threat, but said little about why she had become a threat herself.Driver killed after car chase from White House to Capitol
The car was registered to Miriam Carey, 34, a dental hygienist from Stamford, Conn., law enforcement officials said, adding that they believed Carey was the driver.
Video
Police had a confrontation with a woman in a
black car and engaged in a brief car chase with her before shots were
fired outside the U.S. Capitol on Thursday.
‘SHELTER IN PLACE:’ Inside the Capitol during lockdown
Congressional staffers told to go to offices, lock doors and stay away from windows during shooting
Capitol police: Shooting an 'isolated incident'
VIDEO | U.S. Capitol Police Chief Dine said the shooting outside the Capitol building Thursday appears to be isolated incident.
The chase began at about 2:15 p.m. at a White House security checkpoint, where the woman struck a barrier and a Secret Service officer with her black Infiniti. The woman then sped away from that fortified icon and headed straight for another: the Capitol.
During the chase, police officers opened fire twice, both times in areas busy with tourists and office workers. The Capitol itself was locked down, as a bitter debate over the government shutdown was interrupted by echoes of shots, officers with guns and an urgent order to “shelter in place.”
The end came outside the Hart Senate Office Building, at Maryland Avenue and Second Street NE. The woman’s car got stuck. Officers fired another volley. Then, moments later, an officer emerged with the girl and carried the toddler quickly away as new waves of officers arrived.
Authorities said the woman was not armed, and although the incident was first reported as a shooting at the Capitol, the only shots were fired by officers.
Police said there was no indication that the woman was part of a larger threat. But they said little about why she had suddenly become a threat herself.
“I am pretty confident this was not an accident,” Lanier said at an evening news conference.
Lanier said that the girl was in good condition and in protective custody. Two officers were injured in the chase along Pennsylvania Avenue, but only one, a U.S. Capitol Police officer, was treated at a hospital. He was later released.
The chaotic day caught Washington at an unusually low moment. Just days after the government shut down because of a budget impasse and weeks after 12 people were killed at the nearby Navy Yard, the notion of gunfire and a car hurtling from the White House to the Capitol had the city thinking the worst.
It began with something not that unusual — a driver with out-of-state plates turning into a blocked entry near the White House.
It quickly became something else.
“Whoa! Whoa!,” Secret Service officers were shouting at the car, according to a witness, Shawn Joseph, 29. “It looked liked [the driver was] scared or lost. I thought they might have been a tourist.”
But then, witnesses said, officers tried to place a barrier in front of the car. The driver swerved. The officers moved the barrier. She hit it, and a Secret Service officer was thrown up on the hood and then off the car.
“I thought it was a motorcade,” said Ryan Christiansen, of Idaho Falls, Idaho, when he saw the black car trailed by police cars with sirens wailing. Then, Christiansen said, the car
“was pulling away, and somewhere between six and eight shots were fired,” he said.
Video
Police had a confrontation with a woman in a
black car and engaged in a brief car chase with her before shots were
fired outside the U.S. Capitol on Thursday.
Up there, 46-year-old tourist Edmund Ofori-Attah was walking toward the Hart building to ask if it was open for tours. With most of Washington’s top attractions shut down, touring an office building sounded better than nothing.
Then he saw a black car whiz past. It abruptly turned left, as if to make a U-turn, and lodged itself on a grassy divide.
“That’s where it got pinned,” he said. “At that point, we heard five to six rounds of gunfire and my wife and I dropped to the ground. We were hoping not to get in the way of a stray bullet — we just lay down as low as possible. We even smelled the gunpowder in the air.”
The final shots were fired on that median. Police said they were not sure how many officers had fired or how many times the woman was shot.
Inside the Capitol, legislators were in the middle of their dragging stalemate.
“It was almost like two very rapid-fire bursts, very loud,” said Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), who had been standing outside on a Capitol balcony with Rep. Matthew Cartwright (D-Pa.). They heard the gunfire and saw people running.
Around the vast complex, heavily armed Capitol Police officers began banging on doors, instructing staffers for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Minority Whip Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) to shelter in place and lock their doors.
“Shelter in place. Just get to your office,” an officer said when reporters asked what they should do.
An e-mail went out: “Gunshots have been reported on Capitol Hill. . . . Close, lock and stay away from external doors and windows.” Sharpshooters took positions outside the iconic building. The House adjourned. The Senate adjourned.
Outside, after the shots had been fired, witnesses saw the girl carried from the scene. A police officer sat down on the median and appeared to struggle for breath, visibly shaken.
In the hours after that, law enforcement officials said the car had been registered to Carey. The FBI was at Carey’s apartment Thursday night.
Police said the incident showed the success of the huge security apparatus that Washington has built since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
“The security perimeters worked” at both the White House and the Capitol, Lanier said. “They did exactly what they were supposed to do.”
Both houses of Congress came back later in the day and offered thanks to the Capitol Police. The House gave officers a standing ovation. Senate staffers were distributing small black buttons reading “THANK YOU, CAPITOL POLICE” with a picture of the Capitol Dome.
Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) said he had called the injured Capitol Police officer, and the officer said he would be fine. Reid added that the officer said, “The only thing I do every day is to make sure you and everyone who works up here is safe.”
Clarence Williams, Colum Lynch, Rosalind S. Helderman, Paul Kane, Matt Zapotosky, Justin Jouvenal, Mark Berman, Paul Duggan, Lori Aratani, Susan Svrluga, Petula Dvorak, Sari Horwitz, David Nakamura and Jackie Kucinich contributed to this report.
Driver said to be dental hygienist from Connecticut
Family and friends of 34-year-old Miriam Carey are stunned to hear she is suspected by police.
Officer checks out the vehicle. (Getty)
Miriam Carey, believed to be driver shot near U.S. Capitol, lived with daughter in Conn.
Law enforcement officials said the vehicle was registered to a 34-year-old mother named Miriam Carey, a dental hygienist from Stamford, Conn. They think it was Carey, with her 1-year-old daughter sitting behind her, who flattened barricades outside the White House, struck officers and then set off at high speed down Pennsylvania Avenue.
Photos of the day
Northern lights, Russia’s “grandfather” rock, Germany antique car event, ancient Martian volcanoes and more.Video images showed a young child, her hair in braids, being carried by an officer to the back of a patrol car.
The initial portrait of Carey that emerged suggested a person unlikely to be found in the center of such violence. Carey, according to public documents, friends and family members, had finished college and established a work history as a dental hygienist.
ABC quoted Carey’s mother as saying that Carey suffered from post-partum depression after her child was born. Miriam Carey’s sister, Amy Carey, was incredulous when she was reached Thursday afternoon and told what had happened.
“That’s impossible. She works, she holds a job,” said Amy Carey, a nurse who lives in Brooklyn. “She wouldn’t be in D.C. She was just in Connecticut two days ago, I spoke to her. . . . I don’t know what’s happening. I can’t answer any more.”
Police, fire and emergency vehicles swarmed the Woodside Green apartment complex, where Carey reportedly lived, searched the building and evacuated some residents. The road outside the complex was reopened Friday just before 6:30 a.m., although a large area remained cordoned off by yellow police tape, and a police officer told a reporter to leave the sidewalk.
Residents and workers arriving at nearby businesses said they were shocked to learn that the woman at the center of the shooting at the U.S. Capitol was from their neighborhood. Charlie Clark, 76, a crossing guard who chats regularly with Woodside residents, said he was surprised that he did not recognize Carey’s photo when it was shown on television.
“I kept looking at her, looking at her, I said, ‘See, that’s a beautiful lady,’ ” Clark said. “Hey, anything can happen. I’m just glad they didn’t kill that little baby.”
Mark Rosenbloom, who lives at Woodside, said he did not know Carey, but he did recognize her car. It was always parked in an end spot in the complex parking lot, and was especially well cleaned. “You just notice sometimes cars that are shiny, especially when yours isn’t,” said Rosenbloom, 52. “I don’t think she wanted to get it scratched. Kept it in pretty good shape.”
Eric Sanders, an attorney for the Carey family, said Thursday that the family was struggling to absorb the news. He said he would release an official statement Friday.
“We have to mend the family first and find out what happened in D.C.,” said Sanders, speaking outside the Brooklyn home of another one of Carey’s sisters, Valarie.
People who knew Carey described her as friendly and dedicated.
Angela Windley, 33, befriended Carey while both attended Hostos Community College in the Bronx and graduated with an associate’s degree in dental hygiene. Officials at Brooklyn College confirmed that a student named Miriam Carey graduated in 2007 with a bachelor’s degree in health and nutrition science.
Photos of the day
Northern lights, Russia’s “grandfather” rock, Germany antique car event, ancient Martian volcanoes and more.“She was really just a sweet and nurturing person,” said Sara Vega, a former schoolmate of Carey’s in Brooklyn, where Carey was born and raised. Vega, who now lives in Georgia, said she hadn’t seen Carey in recent years but that the two had been in touch occasionally on Facebook. “I know she had a daughter about a year ago.”
Windley said she and Carey had attended the same high school but did not become friends until their days at the community college. Carey had four sisters, including one who was a longtime New York police officer.
Carey “wanted to have a better life,” Windley said. “The neighborhood we both grew up in wasn’t the greatest, and she always talked about getting out.”
Carey moved to Stamford after “some problems with her landlord,” Windley said, “but the Brooklyn rents were getting so high . . . that’s how she landed in Stamford.”
Carey was “always very professional” and “very focused,” according to Windley. “She wanted better, always.”
Windley said she knew of no connections to the District that Carey might have had and had never heard Carey express any opinion about the government. “This is very shocking,” Windley said as she fought back tears during a telephone interview.
During her friendship with Carey, Windley said she had never witnessed Carey lashing out in anger “beyond, you know, normal girl stuff, like, ‘What is up with her?’ about another girl, but nothing crazy. Some sharp words, that would be it.”
Carey also had not shown signs of mental illness during the time Windley knew her and “was not one to even talk about politics.”
Carey did not have many friends, Windley said, and could seem “arrogant. If there was a negative, people said that was it. She could be sort of conceited, like she knew everything.”
That trait surfaced at school during their training and was off-putting to some of the faculty, Windley said. “But that was the most negative thing you could say about her.”
Carey also was a good driver with a good sense of direction, Windley said. “She wasn’t one to get all crossed up, she knew maps — I even recall saying that I hoped I became as good a driver as she was, since I can get lost in a box.”
In a news conference, D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said the incident did not appear to be an accident, noting there was “a lengthy pursuit.”
Told about the confrontation on Capitol Hill, Windley said: “I would have pulled over, stopped. Why wouldn’t she? Why would she have done this? Why? And why with her daughter in the car? Why would she do something like that?”
Alice Crites, Jennifer Jenkins, and Colum Lynch contributed to this report.
‘I was hiding in the bushes . . . I was so scared’
Passersby describe a chaotic scene as they watched a driver ram a barricade and heard officers yell at them to move.Amid gunshots, guards’ screams near Capitol, onlookers did what they were told: Run!
B.J. Campbell and his wife, visiting from Oregon, saw it begin.
An instant later, blocked from going any farther by a concrete barrier, the woman quickly turned the car around, Campbell said. “The Secret Service guy was just having a cow, yelling at her and banging on the car.”
Officers raised a metal barrier, trying to stop her, he said. “She gunned it. She ran the barricade down,” Campbell said. “And the guy — it knocked him up onto her hood.
“He rolled off into the street.”
●
“It looked like they were scared or lost,” Shawn Joseph, a passerby who lives in the District, said of the driver he saw near the White House, ramming the barricade put up by uniformed Secret Service officers. “Whoa!” the officers yelled. “Whoa!”
Olivia Huckaby was on her lunch break when she heard an officer on a loudspeaker ordering: “Run to the park! Move away from the White House!” With dozens of other people, she ran to Lafayette Square. “It was so frightening. With the Navy Yard shooting just happening, we didn’t know what to think.”
As she watched, the car sped east on Pennsylvania Avenue, police cars in pursuit.
●
A little over a mile away, the Infiniti stopped and briefly rammed a series of police vehicles on the west side of the Capitol, where British tourists Kathryn and Damian Smith happened to be standing, admiring the building’s architecture.
When the commotion started, “they made us run toward the Capitol,” Kathryn Smith said. The couple saw the black car bang into a metal barrier, then into a police car or two.
Regina Romero, visiting from Sacramento, was there, too, near the James A. Garfield Monument and the Capitol reflecting pool, as officers stepped slowly toward the Infiniti with guns drawn. But the driver maneuvered the car free.
As Romero looked on, the Infiniti sped north toward Constitution Avenue.
* * *
●
At Constitution and First Street NW, Giancarlo Reflo, a tourist from Malta, was sitting on a bench. As the Infiniti came toward him, chased by a swarm of police cars, Reflo looked up from the map he was reading. “At first, I thought the driver was trying to get out of the way of police,” he said. Then he realized otherwise.
The fleeing car zoomed past him, turned right on Pennsylvania and crashed a few blocks away, in front of the Hart Senate Office Building at Second Street and Maryland Avenue NE. There was “lots of screaming and shouting,” Reflo said.
“By that time, I was hiding in the bushes, because I was so scared.”
●
Dave Caldwell, an intern for a gay rights group, was in line at a security checkpoint in the Hart Building when a guard yelled: “Everyone outside! Everyone outside!”
Making his way to the exit, he heard “three really loud pops, like right outside the door.” He stopped and turned as the guard began shouting again.
“Everyone inside! Everyone inside!”
Caldwell ducked into the office of Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and holed up there, worried that a gunman was headed for the building. “I was about to, like, hide under a desk. . . . With the government shut down and things of this nature, I just thought there was such high tension that somebody was really mad at the government.”
Video
Police had a confrontation with a woman in a
black car and engaged in a brief car chase with her before shots were
fired outside the U.S. Capitol on Thursday.
Caldwell said the incident was “probably the scariest thing that’s ever happened to me.”
* * *
●
“It was almost like two very rapid bursts, very loud,” said Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), who was standing on a balcony at the Capitol.
“That’s when we saw people fleeing, and we realized this was no fireworks,” he said. Before someone hurried onto the balcony and ushered him back into the building, he saw police officers swarming the Capitol grounds below him.
“It sounded like the first volley of a 21-gun salute,” Connolly said.
“Eight bangs, real fast, in a row,” said Matt McKeighan, an intern who lives at Third Street and Maryland Avenue NE. His neighbor Justin Herman, a furloughed federal worker, said, “I heard, ‘Boom, boom, boom, boom.’
“It sounded like a clip unloading.”
Or, “like an explosion,” as Romero, the tourist from Sacramento, put it. She said she heard about 10 loud bangs, which turned out to be lethal gunfire.
* * *
●
In a building about a block from the shooting scene, Berin Szoka, president of the nonprofit group TechFreedom, heard what he thought was a car backfiring. But instantly, he heard another loud pop, then another and another.
“Then I heard the rest, and I hit the floor.”
Minutes passed. When he dared to get up and peer out a window, he saw officers rushing about on the streets, carrying assault rifles and wearing body armor and helmets. With police radio chatter crackling through loudspeakers, Szoka heard that a suspect had been shot in the head and wasn’t breathing.
She was 34 years old, from Stamford, Conn., authorities said. Why she tried to breach security at the White House and led police on a chase wasn’t immediately clear.
“The scene here is surreal to start with, because Capitol Hill is totally dead because of the shutdown,” he said. “All of a sudden, this happens.”
From the window, he saw one officer hurrying from the black Infiniti.
He was carrying something.
* * *
●
David Loewenberg, an intern furloughed by the Education Department, also saw the officer with a bundle in his arms.
Hearing the shots, he had ran out of his basement apartment and hustled to Second and Constitution nearby.
“Police were swarming at that location,” said Loewenberg, who heard eight or nine shots.
It turned out that the woman wasn’t alone in car. With her was a year-old girl.
That was what Szoka and Loewenberg saw when the smoke cleared.
“A police officer hugging a small child,” Loewenberg said, “taking her away.”
David Nakamura, Ben Pershing, Ed O’Keefe, Rosalind S. Helderman, Susan Svrluga, Paul Kane, Petula Dvorak, Peter Hermann, Justin Jouvenal and Matea Gold contributed to this report.
Clarification: earlier versions of this story misspelled the name of the town in Connecticut where the driver of the black Infiniti reportedly lived.
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