Police on Monday shot a man after he pulled a weapon at a US Capitol checkpoint as spring tourists thronged Washington, authorities said.
The suspect was previously known to police, who arrested him in October last year for disrupting US House of Representatives proceedings and yelling he was a “Prophet of God.”
US Capitol Police identified the man as 66-year-old Larry Dawson of Tennessee. He was charged with assault with a deadly weapon and assault on a police officer while armed, both criminal offenses in the US capital.
Photo: T.J. Kirkpatrick/Bloomberg
Dawson was taken to a local hospital, where police said he was in stable, but critical condition. A female bystander also sustained non-life-threatening injuries.
After his arrest last year, Dawson was issued a “stay away order” by the DC Superior Court in October, telling him to keep away from the Capitol grounds, court documents showed.
The Capitol was on lockdown for about an hour on Monday and the White House was also briefly locked down. As the capital teemed with spring tourists in town to view cherry blossoms, staff members and visitors to the Capitol were rushed into offices and told to shelter in place.
“We do believe this is an act of a single person who has frequented the Capitol grounds before and there is no reason to believe that this is anything more than a criminal act,” Capitol Police Chief Matthew Verderosa told reporters.
He said it was unclear how many officers fired their guns. Initial reports had said an officer was injured, but that proved wrong.
Verderosa said the suspect’s vehicle had been found on Capitol grounds and was being seized.
On Monday evening, all roads had been reopened and the Capitol complex had returned to normal operations, officials said in a statement.
George Washington University Hospital spokeswoman Susan Griffiths said it had treated one patient from the Capitol incident for minor injuries and planned to release the patient shortly, but she did not identify the person.
Monday’s event unfolded with Congress on recess and lawmakers back in their districts. House Speaker Paul Ryan issued a statement thanking Capitol Police, as did other congressional leaders.
“This evening our thoughts and prayers are with all those who faced danger today,” Ryan said.
According to court documents, Dawson was arrested at the Capitol in October after he stood up and shouted Bible verses in the gallery of the House chamber.
An online court record said he was charged with disorderly and disruptive conduct on the grounds of the Capitol and assaulting, resisting or interfering with a police officer. He was also ordered to stay away from the building and grounds.
Dawson did not return for a scheduled hearing in November last year.
In a letter filed with his case, he said he would “not comply with the court order, nor will I surrender myself unto your office.”
“No longer will I let myself be governed by flesh and blood, but only by the divine love of God,” Dawson wrote in the letter.
Other court paperwork quoted Dawson as saying he was previously in the US Army and was honorably discharged in 1971.
An attorney listed as representing him in the case from October, John Copacino, did not immediately return a telephone message or an e-mail requesting comment on Monday afternoon.
Records show Dawson was previously licensed in Tennessee to work as a funeral director. After his license expired in 2004, the state’s Board of Funeral Directors and Embalmers voted three times to deny requests from Dawson to reinstate his license, citing the “applicant’s lack of good moral character.”
Board spokesman Kevin Walters said the denial resulted from an incident that occurred while Dawson was working as a school bus driver in a Nashville, Tennessee, suburb.
Dawson had written a letter to a young girl saying that God had told him to have sex with her, Walters said.
Visitors were turned away from the Capitol in the immediate aftermath of the shooting on Monday as emergency vehicles flooded the street and the plaza on the building’s eastern side.
Police cordoned off the streets immediately around the building.
Cathryn Leff of Temecula, California, in town to lobby with the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapists, said she was going through security at the main entrance to the Capitol Visitors Center when police told people to leave immediately.
Outside, on the plaza just to the east of the Capitol, other officers told those there to “get down behind this wall,” she said. “I heard what sounded like two shots off to my left.”
After a while, police told her and others to keep running.
“I felt like I was in a movie. It didn’t feel real at all,” she added.
From back home in their districts, many lawmakers got in touch with staff to ensure all were safe and posted thanks on Twitter as it appeared they were.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in