One person was fatally shot and four others were injured in a mass shooting near a gym in Washington, D.C. on the morning on Thursday, November 12, which ended with the suspect dying by suicide.
Metropolitan Police Interim Chief Jeffery Carroll said during a press conference that the suspected gunman barricaded himself inside of an apartment after the shooting. The suspect – who was not publicly named but has been identified as a white male – then died by suicide before he was “contained” by police.
Authorities confirmed that the gunman died after D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department said via social media that there was an active shooting in the area of 15th Street and P Street in the city’s Logan Circle neighborhood on Thursday morning.
During Thursday’s press conference, Carroll said that the shooting began in the VIDA gym and that one person was killed at the establishment. Around 50 gym members evacuated after hearing loud bangs.
Three other people suffered non-life-threatening injuries, while one victim is currently in critical condition.
As officers set out to find the suspect, they cleared the gym and an apartment building that is on the same block.
Authorities said they heard gunshots coming from the apartment building’s seventh floor, and police later determined the suspect barricaded himself inside of an apartment.
Negotiators got into contact with the suspect and spoke to him for more than an hour before they eventually heard a gunshot. Officers then forced their way into the apartment, where they found the suspect dead.
The incident has left residents in shock, and one witness opened up about seeing the shooting firsthand.
“I hear a loud bang. So at first, everyone’s confused. I’m confused. Everyone else is confused. And I go towards the commotion area. And I see someone lying on the floor,” Anthony Mirones, who was inside of the gym at the time of the shooting, told WJLA.
Mirones added that another man who had “a better view” of the shooting “looks back behind me and tells me, like, ‘He’s dead.’ So I’m like, ‘What?’”
“I get a little closer. I see he’s on the floor; I see some blood,” Mirones recalled. “So I think, OK, I’m connecting to all this loud bang. I think, ‘gunshot.’”
A fire alarm was then set off so that people would evacuate the gym. “Everyone evacuated eventually pretty quickly and then we’re outside the entrance of the Vida Fitness, and police officers start coming to run inside and then another police officer is outside the entrance asking ‘What’s the description of this guy?’” Mirones said.
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