Secret Service officers shot a “suicidal” man near the White House during an armed confrontation early Sunday morning.
Officers were warned by police on Saturday about a suicidal person who had plans to travel to Washington, D.C. from Indiana. Shortly after midnight on Sunday, the Secret Service encountered the man’s parked car near the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which is just one block from the White House.
“As officers approached, the individual brandished a firearm and an armed confrontation ensued, during which shots were fired by our personnel,” the Secret Service wrote in a statement. “The suspect was rushed to an area hospital and his condition is unknown.”
No Secret Service members were injured. The Metropolitan Police’s Internal Affairs Division will lead an investigation into the shooting.
President Donald Trump was away from the White House, at his Florida Mar-a-Lago resort, when the shooting occurred. The shooting comes after Trump, who survived multiple assassination attempts on the campaign trail last year, and others in his cabinet have expressed fears over assassination threats.
Trump was first shot at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., last July, by gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks, who the Secret Service failed to spot before he fired eight shots into the rally crowd. The “various failures in planning, execution, and leadership . . . coalesced to create an environment in which the former President — and everyone at the campaign event — were exposed to grave danger,” the bipartisan House task force that investigated the attempts against Trump’s life said in a report.
A second assassination attempt came in West Palm Beach, Florida, in September. Would-be-assassin Ryan Wesley Routh waited outside of the Trump International Golf Club, where the then-President-elect was golfing, before Secret Service spotted and immediately fired upon the gunman.
After the two attempts, the Senate unanimously voted in September to bolster Secret Service detail for presidential and vice presidential candidates.