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National Guard member in DC shooting shows ‘positive sign’ West Virginia governor says
A person walks past a makeshift memorial for U.S. Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom and U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe outside of Farragut West Station, near the site where the two National Guard members were shot on Dec. 1 in Washington, D.C.
Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
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Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP
The ambush-style attack last week in Washington, D.C. that killed one National Guard soldier and wounded another has brought grief to a West Virginia community and profound implications for refugees, while a troubling profile of the suspect emerges.
West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey (R) speaks while West Virginia National Guard Maj. Gen. James Seward (L) looks on during a news conference on Dec. 1 at the West Virginia Capitol in Charleston, W.Va.
John Raby/AP
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John Raby/AP
At a press conference on Monday, West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey said he received word from Andrew Wolfe’s family that the 24-year-old remains in serious condition but has shown some progress.
“We were told that Andrew was asked if he could hear the nurse who asked the question to give a thumbs up, and he did respond,” Morrisey said. “And we were told that he also wiggled his toes. So we take that as a positive sign.”
Wolfe and Sarah Beckstrom — both members of the West Virginia National Guard — were on patrol on Thanksgiving eve just blocks from the White House when a gunman came around the corner and opened fire at close-range, authorities said. Beckstrom, 20, died from her injuries on Thursday.
Meanwhile, the suspect, 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, remains in custody and faces a first-degree murder charge. Authorities say Lakanwal drove across the country from his home in Washington state to the nation’s capital to carry out the unprovoked attack.
A refugee resettlement volunteer who worked closely with Lakanwal’s family told NPR that the suspect did not show any signs of radicalization — like some U.S. officials have suggested. Instead, the volunteer said they worried about Lakanwal’s wellbeing and feared he was suffering a mental health crisis.
Last week, Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said the alleged gunman will be charged with terrorism and she will seek the death penalty if either soldier died.
Here’s what to know.
High school principal describes Beckstrom as “always willing to help others”
A photo is displayed of National Guard member Specialist Sarah Beckstrom in Webster Springs, W.Va., on Nov. 28.
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Kathleen Batten/AP
Beckstrom joined the service in 2023, but her commitment to serving others was a defining part of her character, according to Gabriel Markle, the principal at Webster County High School, which Beckstrom attended.
“She carried herself with quiet strength, a contagious smile and a positive energy that lifted people around her,” Markle said at a vigil organized at the high school on Saturday night.
He added, “She was sweet, caring and always willing to help others.”
Gov. Morrisey, who was also in attendance, said Beckstrom’s family and friends described her as having “a bright smile, a very big heart, and someone who loved to serve others.”
“She wore that uniform with pride,” he said. “And this deserves to be said a few times, she volunteered for the mission,” referring to the troop deployment in D.C.
Both Beckstrom and Wolfe were deployed to the nation’s capital in August, when President Trump first brought in troops, saying they were needed to address crime. The deployments have been met with pushback from both local Democratic leaders who said they were unnecessary and federal court judges, who have questioned their legality.
According to Morrisey, Beckstrom and Wolfe were friends leading up to the attack last week. “I’ve heard some of the stories that they talked, they liked each other, they talked fondly about each other,” he added.
The suspect was withdrawn and possibly suffering from PTSD
This photo showing Rahmanullah Lakanwal was provided by the U.S. Attorney’s Office on Nov. 27.
AP/U.S. Attorney’s Office
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AP/U.S. Attorney’s Office
New details suggest that Lakanwal was suffering from a personal crisis leading up to the attack, NPR’s Brian Mann reported.
A refugee resettlement volunteer who worked closely with Lakanwal’s family said the suspect spent a lot of time alone in his bedroom without speaking to his wife and kids.
“My biggest concern was that [Lakanwal] would harm himself,” the volunteer said. “I worried he would be suicidal because he was so withdrawn.” The volunteer spoke with NPR on condition of anonymity because they said they feared retaliation for having worked with Afghan refugees, including Lakanwal.
Before he moved to the U.S., Lakanwal served in one of Afghanistan’s elite counterterrorism units, which was operated by the CIA and focused on fighting the Taliban. When the Taliban seized control of Kabul in 2021, Lakanwal was evacuated by the U.S. military and later, resettled to the U.S. through Operation Allies Welcome.
According to the volunteer, Lakanwal struggled to find a stable job and adjust to life in the U.S., which led to growing isolation. The volunteer added that Lakanwal was prone to take cross-country drives without telling his family.
Trump administration toughens immigration policies
A makeshift memorial of flowers and American flags stands outside the Farragut West Metro station on Dec. 1 in Washington, D.C.
Heather Diehl/Getty Images North America
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Heather Diehl/Getty Images North America
The shooting in D.C. has also led to swift and sweeping changes to multiple immigration processes.
NPR’s Ximeno Bustillo reported that the administration has paused all visa reviews for people from Afghanistan. That includes special immigrant visas, a program specifically designed to relocate those who had helped the U.S. military and its allies, and were at risk living under Taliban rule.
Some veterans and refugee advocates criticized the policy changes, arguing that an entire community should not be punished for the actions of one person.
“Our hearts are absolutely broken for our Afghan allies, who have already endured more trauma, loss, and sacrifice than most Americans can imagine,” Shawn VanDiver, who leads #AfghanEvac, a group that supports the resettlement of Afghans to the U.S., said in a statement.
More broadly, the administration halted all asylum decisions. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said reviews will not restart until the agency has “dealt with the backlog” which is currently over a million cases.
“That backlog needs to be cleared up,” Noem said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet The Press.“
Joseph Edlow, the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, also ordered a sweeping review of green card holders from “every country of concern” — referring to a list of 19 countries that the administration previously ruled has “deficient” vetting and screening.
The maker of Canvas, the software used by thousands of schools and universities around the world, said on Monday that it had reached a deal with the hackers that recently breached its systems for the return of stolen data and the destruction of any copies.
ShinyHunters, a hacking group, had claimed responsibility for the attack on Instructure, the Salt Lake City-based company that provides Canvas to about half of all colleges and universities in North America.
The hackers said they had accessed the data of more than 275 million users at nearly 9,000 schools worldwide, including private conversations between students and teachers as well as personal identifying information such as names and email addresses. Canvas was shut down for hours after the cyberattack on Thursday.
The agreement, Instructure said in a statement, involved the return of the stolen data and confirmation that the data had been destroyed at the hackers’ end. Instructure added that it had been informed that none of its customers would face extortion as a result of the theft.
“While there is never complete certainty when dealing with cybercriminals, we believe it was important to take every step within our control to give customers additional peace of mind, to the extent possible,” the company said.
Instructure did not say what it had given the hackers in exchange for the return of the data. The company did not immediately respond to questions about the deal.
Canvas has more than 30 million active users around the world, according to Instructure. The platform is used by teachers and students for coursework management and communications. Instructure said the data compromised in the hack included usernames, email addresses, course names, enrollment information and messages.
ShinyHunters on Thursday claimed the attack in a message that appeared on students’ Canvas pages and was obtained by The New York Times. The group warned that it would leak an unspecified amount of data on May 12 if it did not receive a response from Instructure. In its May 3 ransom note, the group had threatened to leak “several billions of private messages among students and teachers.”
Not much is known about ShinyHunters, which is believed to have been formed around 2020. Its goal appears to be to obtain personal records and sell them. One of its high-profile attacks was against Ticketmaster in 2024, when the hackers said they had stolen the user information of more than 500 million customers.
Instructure said it first detected unauthorized activity in Canvas on Apr. 29, and again on May 7. The company said it took Canvas offline to investigate the breach, and also informed the F.B.I., the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and other international law enforcement partners.
Instructure did not immediately respond to questions about whether any law enforcement agencies were involved in its dealings with the hackers. The F.B.I. advises against paying ransom to hackers, saying it does not guarantee data security and encourages attackers to target more victims.
The National Quarantine Center is located at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.
Nebraska Medicine
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Nebraska Medicine
Sixteen of the 18 passengers transferred to the U.S. from a cruise ship where there was an outbreak of hantavirus arrived in Omaha, Neb., on Monday for evaluation after disembarking the vessel in Spain’s Canary Islands over the weekend.
Of the 15 U.S. citizens and one dual U.S.-British citizen who arrived in Nebraska, all but one are currently being housed in the National Quarantine Unit. That patient tested positive for the virus and was being housed in the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit, officials said at a Monday news conference. The 15 people in the quarantine unit will continue to be monitored for signs of the illness.
Passengers carry their belongings in plastic bags after being evacuated from the MV Hondius after docking in the Granadilla Port on Sunday in Tenerife, part of the Canary Islands, Spain.
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Chris McGrath/Getty Images
Nebraska may seem an unlikely location to process these individuals, but it is home to the National Quarantine Unit — the only federally funded quarantine unit in the U.S. — and the separate Nebraska Biocontainment Unit. They are highly specialized facilities located at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) and widely considered among the best in the world.
The $1 million, five-room biocontainment unit was dedicated in 2005. It was a joint project with Nebraska Health and Human Services and the UNMC. It is set up to safely provide medical care for patients with highly hazardous and infectious diseases and was used in 2014 to treat two doctors infected with Ebola. The National Quarantine Unit was completed in late 2019. It cost nearly $20 million, according to the Associated Press. Both facilities were used during the COVID-19 epidemic.
“We are prepared for situations exactly like this,” Dr. Michael Ash, CEO of Nebraska Medicine, said in a statement. “Our teams have trained for decades alongside federal and state partners to make sure we can safely provide care while protecting our staff and the broader community. We are proud to support this national effort.”
Two additional U.S. passengers on the cruise ship — a couple, with one showing symptoms of hantavirus — were transferred for monitoring to Emory University Hospital, where another advanced biocontainment facility is located.
When the biocontainment unit was first dedicated more than 20 years ago, the biggest concerns were anthrax attacks and severe acute respiratory syndrome, more commonly known as SARS, Dr. Phil Smith, who spearheaded the efforts at Nebraska Medical Center to create the biocontainment unit, told the AP in 2020. Smith died last year.
A hallway leading to rooms at the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
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Nebraska Medicine
The quarantine unit features 20 negative-pressure rooms designed to keep potentially harmful particles from escaping by maintaining lower air pressure inside than outside the rooms. The single-occupancy rooms provide patients with attached bathrooms, exercise equipment and Wi-Fi, according to the medical center.
“We have protocols in the quarantine unit that provide for safe care of these of these persons, including just all the activities of daily living so that they can … have a comfortable stay but also have it in an area that’s protected and limits spread of the pathogen,” Dr. Michael Wadman, the medical director of the National Quarantine Unit, said at a Friday news conference.
The biocontainment unit, by contrast, is a patient-care space where people are able to receive medical treatment, Dr. Angela Hewlett, medical director of the biocontainment unit, told reporters Monday.
She emphasized that the facility — which has a 10-bed capacity — operates independently from the quarantine unit and has its own dedicated air-handling system. “We don’t share [it] with any of the rest of the facility,” she said, noting that the unit uses rooftop HEPA filtration and is designed “very differently” from what most people typically imagine in a hospital setting.
One of the rooms in the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit.
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Nebraska Medicine
Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen, speaking at Monday’s news conference, welcomed the recently arrived patients, who are among nearly 150 people from 23 different countries who were aboard the MV Hondius when the illness most commonly transmitted to humans through contact with infected rodents broke out. As of Monday, the World Health Organization has reported at least nine cases of hantavirus, including three deaths.
“We’re glad that you’re here,” Pillen said. “We’re going to ensure that you have the best world-class care possible.”
Pillen also sought to reassure Nebraskans that the facilities are safe and secure: “We’re working diligently to ensure no one leaves the security in an unsecured way at an inappropriate time,” he said. “No one poses a risk to public health, just walking out the front door of the streets of Omaha.”
The hantavirus outbreak on the cruise ship has been identified as the Andes strain of the illness, one that can be spread, though rarely, from person-to-person, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It can cause severe respiratory disease, with early flu-like symptoms.
“The Andes variant of this virus does not spread easily, and it requires prolonged, close contact with someone who is already symptomatic,” according to Adm. Brian Christine, the assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, who spoke at Monday’s news conference. “Even so, we have taken this situation very seriously from the very start.”
“The risk of hantavirus to the general public remains very, very low,” he said.
The full quarantine period for hantavirus is 42 days, Christine said, but he added that the patients would be allowed to go home if they remained asymptomatic.
“Right now, the passengers that are all in the assessment phase — they’re going to be here for at least a few days while we do assessments and the coordination on what happens next,” he said, adding that they had the option to remain in the quarantine facility for the full period, for “the safest and most effective option for them.”
new video loaded: Americans Exposed to Hantavirus on Cruise Ship Arrive in United States
transcript
transcript
Americans Exposed to Hantavirus on Cruise Ship Arrive in United States
Eighteen passengers who were aboard the MV Hondius, a cruise ship with a deadly hantavirus outbreak, landed in Omaha on a U.S. government medical flight. The passengers were being monitored at medical facilities in Nebraska and Georgia.
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We’re working diligently to ensure no one leaves the security in an unsecured way at an inappropriate time. No one who poses a risk to public health is walking out the front door of the streets of Omaha or beyond.
By Axel Boada
May 11, 2026
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