Gunfire rang out inside the Capitol Visitor Center on Monday when a police officer shot a man with a gun.
Gunfire rattled Capitol Hill when a police officer shot a gunman inside U.S. Capitol Visitor Center on Monday afternoon.
At approximately 2:40 p.m., an unknown male with a gun entered the visitor center below the Capitol grounds. The Capitol’s sergeant-at-arms said the “shooter has been caught” and that a U.S. Capitol Police officer was "shot, but not seriously."
A female bystander was also reportedly injured in the gunfire.
The Capitol and adjacent office buildings were placed on lock down for about a half hour before an all-clear order was issued. There was reportedly some confusion as the day began with a scheduled lockdown drill. "THIS IS A DRILL," an early morning memo notified Capitol staffers. "EXERCISE EXERCISE."
The Visitor Center was commissioned, in part, as a response to a 1998 shooting at the Capitol when Russell Eugene Weston Jr. (a paranoid schizophrenic) entered the building and shot and killed Capitol Police officers Jacob Chestnut and John Gibson. All visitors to the capitol now enter via the underground center and its layers of security.
Violence is not uncommon on Capitol Hill.
Last April, a man killed himself outside the building. In 2013, a woman was fatally shot near the Capitol after attempting to drive through a White House security checkpoint. In 1971, the Weather Underground exploded a bomb in a Senate bathroom (no one was injured). In 1954, four Puerto Rican nationalists fired 30 rounds from a balcony, injuring five congressman.
In 1835, President Andrew Jackson survived an assassination attempt after leaving the Capitol (he was shot but beat the gunman with his cane).