Police find a suspect in a shooting near a Washington school dead

At least four persons were shot and wounded by the shooter who started fire from a sniper’s nest on the top story of an apartment building near an exclusive prep school in Washington, DC.

According to the Fairfax County Police Department, they first identified the suspect as Raymond Spencer, 23, of Fairfax, Virginia, after seeing a video he had uploaded to social media showing rounds being fired from an upper-floor window with the caption “School shooting!”

The Washington metropolitan police chief, Robert Contee, said the video “seems very much to be legitimate,” but it was still unclear if the film was broadcast live or had been released after it was captured during a late-night press conference.
Earlier that day, police had released photos of Spencer along with a notice identifying him as a “person of interest” in their investigation.

At this point, authorities had entered Spencer’s “sniper-type setup,” which featured a weapon placed on a tripod, and Spencer shot himself dead.

“They were going about their business… on the streets of the District of Columbia,” he stated, when the four victims were randomly shot.

A 54-year-old male and a mid-30-year-old woman were rushed to surrounding hospitals with serious wounds, while a 12-year-old child was shot in the arm, according to assistant police chief Stuart Emerman at an earlier briefing.

Emerman said that a lady in her 60s who was the fourth victim was treated on the spot for a minor graze wound.
Multiple gunshots could be heard coming from the Van Ness neighbourhood of north-west Washington soon before the end of the school day, according to eyewitness accounts. At least 20 bullets were fired, according to Contee.

Local television station WUSA-TV received a report from an eyewitness who claimed to have heard a burst of rapid gunfire lasting around one minute and seeing a lady fleeing out of a building after she looked to have been hit by a bullet.

There were reports of individuals running for safety behind parked vehicles, and they pointed up at the balcony where the gunfire was heard, the eyewitness added.

Insanity reigned. Edmund Burke parent Jade Moore tells WJLA that her daughter was huddled in a classroom with other children until police took them to a safer area of the school. “I mean, it’s just ridiculous,” she says. There’s no place you can go where you’re secure, even if you believe you are.

The incident occurred on a busy stretch of Connecticut Avenue near many foreign embassies, the Howard University School of Law, and a campus of the University of the District of Columbia, which authorities stated they had no reason for.

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