The eyewitness said he saw other people on the street taking cover behind parked cars and pointing up to a balcony where they presumably believed the gunshots originated. One eyewitness told local television station WUSA-TV he heard a burst of rapid gunfire lasting about a minute, and saw a woman running out of a building who appeared to have been grazed by a gunshot, followed by other individuals who were apparently wounded. Contee said at least 20 rounds were fired. Three people struck by gunfire were taken to area hospitals: a 54-year-old man and a woman in her mid-30s with severe wounds, and a 12-year-old girl wounded in the arm, assistant police chief Stuart Emerman said during an earlier briefing.Ī fourth victim, a woman in her mid-60s, was treated on the scene for a slight graze wound, Emerman said.Įyewitnesses said they heard multiple bursts of gunfire in the upscale Van Ness neighbourhood of north-west Washington next to the Edmund Burke school just as classes were about to be dismissed for the day. on the streets of the District of Columbia”. He said the four victims were shot at random as “they were going about their business. “His intent was to kill and hurt members of our community”, but investigators had yet to determine a motive, Contee said, adding that the gunman acted alone. Police seized more than half a dozen firearms, including several rifles, and large amounts of ammunition in the apartment, which had been arranged in a “sniper-type setup” with a tripod weapons mount, the chief said. With help from eyewitness reports, police managed to pinpoint the gunman’s position to the fifth floor of a “particular apartment building” and ultimately “breached the location where the suspect took his own life”, Contee said. The school and other properties in the vicinity were placed under a security lockdown, with frightened students texting anxious parents as police mounted a door-to-door search for the suspect. Police had issued a bulletin with photographs of Spencer hours earlier saying they were seeking him as a “person of interest” in their investigation.

The Washington metropolitan police chief, Robert Contee, told a late-night news conference the video “looks very much to be authentic” but it remained uncertain whether the footage was streamed live or had been posted after it was recorded.

Washington dc lockdown shooting