Xinhua News Agency
WASHINGTON — A person, believed to be the suspect of a shooting that wounded four people in northwest Washington, D.C. on Friday afternoon, has been found dead, local police said.
Robert Contee, chief of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, told reporters that they “believe the suspect took his own life” as officers were entering or breaching the apartment where he was located.
The police department tweeted in the evening that Raymond Spencer, 23, of Fairfax, Virginia, was identified as a person of interest.
Officers recovered six firearms, including long guns, and multiple rounds of ammunition “inside the fifth-floor apartment where the suspect was found deceased.”
“This was very much a sniper-type setup with a tripod, and this person, obviously, his intent was to kill and hurt members of our community,” Contee stressed.
“It just appears that this person was just shooting at anyone who was out there randomly,” he said, adding that the shooter was firing from north to south “definitely in excess of 20 rounds.”
The shooting that took place at about 3:20 p.m. (1920 GMT) prompted a massive police response and school lockdowns.
Officers in tactical gear could be seen running in the area, while others had their guns drawn as they evacuated residents of an apartment building on Van Ness Street NW.
There were four people wounded in the incident — two adult females, one adult male, and a juvenile. An investigation is underway to determine the gunman’s motive.
“This epidemic of gun violence in our country, the easy access to firearms — it has got to stop,” Mayor Muriel Bowser said in a letter to Washingtonians late Friday night.
More than 23,000 people have died or been injured due to gun-related incidents in the United States this year, according to a database run by the nonprofit research group Gun Violence Archive. – gb
