80
ASSOCIATED PRESS
A Secret Service Police Officer patrolled the North Lawn of the White House in Washington, today, after reports of anactive shooter at the U.S. Capitol. A U.S. Capitol Police officer was shot and injured today at the Capitol Complex,according to initial reports. The officer was not seriously injured and the shooter was caught and is in custody, Capitolofficials said.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Law enforcement and rescue vehicles were seen on Capitol Hill in Washington, today, after reports of gunfire at the Capitol Visitor Center complex.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Capitol Police officers secure the Capitol Visitor’s Center on Capitol Hill in Washington today, which was closed to tourists following a shooting.
WASHINGTON » Police shot a man today after he pulled a weapon at a U.S. Capitol checkpoint as spring tourists thronged Washington, authorities said. The suspect was previously known to police, who last October arrested him for disrupting House proceedings and yelling he was a “Prophet of God.”
U.S. Capitol Police identified the man as 66-year-old Larry R. Dawson of Tennessee. He was charged with assault with a deadly weapon and assault on a police officer while armed, both criminal offenses in the District of Columbia.
Dawson was taken to a local hospital, where police said he was in stable but critical condition. A female bystander also sustained non-life-threatening injuries.
After his arrest last year, Dawson was issued a “stay away order” by D.C. Superior Court in October, telling him to keep away from the Capitol grounds, court documents show.
The U.S. Capitol was on lockdown for about an hour Monday and the White House also was briefly locked down. As the capital teemed with spring tourists in town to view the cherry blossoms, staff members and visitors to theCapitol were rushed into offices and told to shelter in place.
“We do believe this is an act of a single person who has frequented the Capitol grounds before and there is no reason to believe that this is anything more than a criminal act,” Capitol Chief of Police Matthew R. Verderosa told reporters. He said it was unclear how many officers fired their guns. Initial reports had said an officer was injured but that proved wrong.
Verderosa said the suspect’s vehicle had been found on Capitol grounds and was being seized. On Monday evening, all roads had been reopened and the U.S. Capitol complex had returned to normal operations, officials said in a statement.
George Washington University Hospital spokeswoman Susan Griffiths said it had treated one patient from theCapitol incident for minor injuries and planned to release the patient shortly, but she did not identify the person.
Monday’s event unfolded with Congress on recess and lawmakers back in their districts. House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., issued a statement thanking Capitol Police, as did other congressional leaders. “This evening our thoughts and prayers are with all those who faced danger today,” Ryan said.
According to court documents, Dawson was arrested at the U.S. Capitol in October after he stood up and shouted Bible verses in the gallery of the House chamber. An online court record says he was charged with disorderly and disruptive conduct on the grounds of the Capitol and assaulting, resisting or interfering with a police officer. He was also ordered to stay away from the building and grounds.
Dawson did not return for a scheduled hearing in November. In a letter filed with his case, he says he will “not comply with the court order, nor will I surrender myself unto your office.”
“No longer will I let myself be governed by flesh and blood, but only by the Divine Love of God,” he wrote, adding four exclamation points.
Other court paperwork said Dawson said he was previously in the Army and was honorably discharged in 1971.
An attorney listed as representing him in the case from October, John Copacino, did not immediately return a telephone message and an e-mail requesting comment Monday afternoon.
Records show Dawson was previously licensed in Tennessee to work as a funeral director. After his license expired in 2004, the state’s Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers voted three times to deny requests from Dawson to reinstate his license, citing the “applicant’s lack of good moral character.”
Kevin Walters, a spokesman for the state funeral board, said the denial resulted from an incident that occurred while Dawson was working as a school bus driver in a Nashville suburb. Dawson had written a letter to a young girl saying that God had told him to have sex with her, Walters said.
Visitors were turned away from the Capitol in the immediate aftermath of the shooting Monday as emergency vehicles flooded the street and the plaza on the building’s eastern side. Police, some carrying long guns, cordoned off the streets immediately around the building.
Cathryn Leff of Temecula, California, in town to lobby with the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, said she was going through security at the main entrance to the Capitol Visitors Center when police told people to leave immediately.
Outside, on the plaza just to the east of the Capitol, other officers told those there to “get down behind this wall,” she said. “I heard what sounded like two shots off to my left.” After a while, police told her and others to keep running. “I felt like I was in a movie. It didn’t feel real at all.”
From back home in their districts, many lawmakers got in touch with staff to ensure all were safe, and posted thanks on Twitter as it appeared they were.
Earlier in the day, officials conducted an unrelated shelter-in-place drill at the Capitol.
__
Associated Press writers Mark Sherman, Michael Biesecker, Mary Clare Jalonick, Jessica Gresko and Alan Fram contributed to this report.
How good are the shooters assigned to the Honolulu Airport check points? Sounds like the Captial cops did some good shooting, hitting suspect after pulling a firearma after going through a walk through magnetometer simlar to what TSA uses.
Why don’t you try and report back to us.
I know the answer, just want to make more money later.
They’re probably good enough to hit a paper target if it’s not too far, not too small, and they aren’t too rushed – but that’s true of most people. Nothing is guaranteed in an unplanned and fluid situation. Not even the vaunted FBI Hostage Rescue Team can hit what they aim at if the circumstances aren’t favorable. Ask former member Lon Horiuchi about that.
Or dick Cheney shooting a buddy in the face.
When I first heard about this, I worried about schoolkids on field trips – that’s a popular site. But the weird thing is that then I had to wonder: is this coming from an ISIS cell, or from a home-grown, anti-government crazy? What a world we live in.
You can thank a Democrat for the chaotic country/world we live in today. By far the most dangerous threat facing America is the current Democratic party. They’ve destroyed the fabric of our society, and re-written political behavior. It’s not only aberrant behavior they condone, but the essence of all that comes from selfish accommodation. Barrack and the Democrats will go down as a lunatic fringe in the annals of history. A time when America just couldn’t figure-out if race or racism was more important. Turns-out neither were very important at all.
That is quite the scholarly analysis you put together. It makes about as much sense as anything else you write here.
What a luni, this peanut crack.
Put the guy to sleep before he kills somebody
This guy is a mental case. Too bad the good guys did not hit the body mass they aim for. In his case life threatening should be appropriate, no fuss no muss, just a dead lunatic.
So if people are mentally ill, just kill them? When the opportunity presents itself, acting like a sociopath is always the right choice! Let me guess …. you’re a Trump supporter?
Clearly this man was made ill by a Democrat and that makes his illness a capital offense.
If he had yelled that he was a prophet of Allah, conservative media would be going berserk; instead there’s an eerie silence, similar to the one that follows the bombing of abortion clinics by Christian terrorists.