First modification:
In the fourth case of gun violence in the United States in just over a week, a gunman opened fire on random victims from an apartment building in a wealthy neighborhood of the capital. Four people, including a 12-year-old girl, were injured. The event ended with the discovery of a dead suspect in an apparent suicide, according to local authorities.
Four people were injured last Friday, April 22, shortly before 3:30 p.m., after being shot in a wealthy area between the Van Ness and Cleveland Park neighborhoods, in the District of Columbia, in Washington DC The area is also home to the renowned Edmund Burke High School.
The deputy chief of the US capital’s Metropolitan Police Department, Stuart Emerman, reported that the victims include a 54-year-old man, a woman in her 30s, a woman in her 60s who was grazed on the back by a bullet and did not have to be admitted to the hospital, and a 12-year-old girl who was shot in the arm.
During the moments after the attack, armed police teams closed off the area and asked the residents of the area to take safety and stay inside houses and buildings due to the “active threat”.
Local NBC affiliate WRC-TV showed evacuees from one building running down the sidewalk, some with their hands raised.
The Chief of the Washington, DC Metropolitan Police Department, Robert J. Contee III, estimated that the sniper fired at least 20 shots in the quiet neighborhood, which is home to dozens of embassies and several schools.
Police find the bodyview of the suspect
After 9:30 p.m., six hours after the first news about the incident emerged, the Police confirmed in a tweet that “the suspect”, a 23-year-old man named Raymond Spencer, “has been found dead”, in an apparent suicide, “in the bathroom of an apartment in the AVA residential building in Van Ness”.
The chief of the Police of the US capital said that in the place, which had been adapted as a sniper’s nest, the agents seized “more than half a dozen firearms, including several rifles”, as well as “large amounts of ammunition”.
While “his intent was to kill and injure members of our community,” investigators have not yet determined a motive, Contee said, adding that for now the gunman is believed to have acted alone and that no one else is being sought. moment.
According to The Washington Post, authorities are examining internet posts that could be from Spencer.
At 15:24 pm (19:24 GMT) on Friday, the alleged perpetrator of the shooting wrote on the 4chan platform “dear God, please forgive me.”
Minutes later he posted that he was “waiting for the police to find me” as they were looking “on the wrong side of the building.”
In addition, a user going by the same name as the suspect, Raymond Spencer, stated on the Wikipedia web page for nearby Edmund Burke High School that “a gunman fired on the school on April 22, 2022” and that “the suspect keep on the run.”
Wave of gun violence in the United States
The Washington shooting comes just days after two minors were killed and nine people were injured in a case of gun violence in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Hours before the shooting in Pittsburgh, another shooting occurred in a South Carolina shopping center, where several people were injured; and in previous days, a gunman opened fire in a New York subway car, injuring more than 20 citizens.
With AP, EFE and Reuters
#Shooting #Washington #attacker #died #leaving #wounded