Suspect in shooting that injured four near Washington school found dead, police say

A gunman opened fireplace on random victims from a sniper’s nest on the higher flooring of an condominium constructing close to an elite prep college in Washington, wounding 4 folks earlier than taking his personal life as police burst into his dwelling.

Police stated on Friday night the suspect, Raymond Spencer, 23, of suburban Fairfax, Virginia, was initially recognized from video he had posted on social media that appeared to indicate gunshots fired from the vantage level of an upper-floor window, with the misspelled label: “Shool taking pictures!”

The Washington metropolitan police chief, Robert Contee, instructed a late-night information convention the video “seems very a lot to be genuine” nevertheless it remained unsure whether or not the footage was streamed stay or had been posted after it was recorded.

Police had issued a bulletin with images of Spencer hours earlier saying they have been in search of him as a “individual of curiosity” of their investigation.

The college and different properties within the neighborhood have been positioned below a safety lockdown, with frightened college students texting anxious dad and mom as police mounted a door-to-door seek for the suspect.

With assist from eyewitness studies, police managed to pinpoint the gunman’s place to the fifth flooring of a “specific condominium constructing” and finally “breached the situation the place the suspect took his personal life”, Contee stated.

Police seized greater than half a dozen firearms, together with a number of rifles, and enormous quantities of ammunition within the condominium, which had been organized in a “sniper-type setup” with a tripod weapons mount, the chief stated.

“His intent was to kill and harm members of our neighborhood”, however investigators had but to find out a motive, Contee stated, including that the gunman acted alone.

He stated the 4 victims have been shot at random as “they have been going about their enterprise … on the streets of the District of Columbia”.

Three folks struck by gunfire have been taken to space hospitals: a 54-year-old man and a lady in her mid-30s with extreme wounds, and a 12-year-old lady wounded within the arm, assistant police chief Stuart Emerman stated throughout an earlier briefing.

A fourth sufferer, a lady in her mid-60s, was handled on the scene for a slight graze wound, Emerman stated.

Eyewitnesses stated they heard a number of bursts of gunfire within the upscale Van Ness neighbourhood of north-west Washington subsequent to the Edmund Burke college simply as lessons have been about to be dismissed for the day. Contee stated a minimum of 20 rounds have been fired.

One eyewitness instructed native tv station WUSA-TV he heard a burst of speedy gunfire lasting a few minute, and noticed a lady working out of a constructing who appeared to have been grazed by a gunshot, adopted by different people who have been apparently wounded.

The eyewitness stated he noticed different folks on the road taking cowl behind parked automobiles and pointing as much as a balcony the place they presumably believed the gunshots originated.

Video posted on Twitter captured the sound of bursts of speedy gunfire. One witness, recognized by an area reporter as Austin Bittle, stated he was in a close-by espresso store when he heard greater than 20 gunshots ring out in fast succession earlier than seeing cops racing towards the scene.

“It was insanity. I imply, it’s simply unbelievable,” Jade Moore, an Edmund Burke father or mother, instructed WJLA of the incident, which she stated left her daughter huddled inside a classroom till police escorted her and different college students to a safer a part of the campus. “You realize, you suppose they’re protected, however you’re not protected anyplace.”

Authorities stated they’d no motive for the taking pictures, which passed off alongside a busy Connecticut Avenue hall that can be house to a number of international embassies, the Howard College Faculty of Regulation and a campus of the College of the District of Columbia.