Capitol briefly locked down after suicide at West Front

By Washington Post

The U.S. Capitol was on lockdown for several hours Saturday after a suicide at the West Front of the building, police said.

 

Lt. Kimberly Schneider, spokesman for the U.S. Capitol Police, said the individual died after a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The building and the visitor center were locked down as a precautionary measure. Just before 4 p.m. the East Front was opened but the West Front remained closed for further investigation of a suspicious package linked to the suicide.

 

Police taped the area surrounding the Capitol off with yellow crime tape — and inside, among several emergency vehicles, was a D.C. hazardous materials truck — but bystanders seemed more curious than scared. One woman on a bicycle stopped to take a selfie with the scene in the background.

 

Jim White arrived at the Capitol Visitors Center around 1 p.m. About five minutes later, he said an announcement came over the loudspeaker that the building was on lockdown. He said there was no panic among the hundreds of others in the building after the announcement, just chatter about what could be going on outside. His 1:30 p.m. tour went on as scheduled. The only indication that something was amiss: the tour guide kept extending the tour and extending it and extending it.

 

“We kept asking him, ‘what’s happening?’ and he said he didn’t know,” White, 63-year-old IT director for the city of Philadelphia, said. Finally, with nothing more to say, the tour guide let them go and he and his friend returned to the waiting area, where they immediately checked their phones for updates.

 

“We read that someone had committed suicide,’ he said. “And we understood there was concern that there still may be a bomb.”

 

So White and a friend settled in to wait. More than an hour later they – along with hundreds of other folks -- are still waiting. White said he’s sitting below the replica of the Statue of Freedom – rather ironic, he quipped, given his current status.

 

“I know it’s not a joking matter, but people are getting restless and they’re wondering why we’re still here,” he said. “We’re just stuck here watching hundreds of other people checking their phones.”

 

Kate Schillinger, 26, said she was in the Library of Congress when a bystander told her that the U.S. Capitol was locked down just before 1:15 p.m. She said a security guard told her there was some type of shooter.

 

Schillinger, who lives in the District and was touring the Library with her cousins from North Carolina, said there appeared to be little urgency, though, from bystanders. One of her cousins, 15-year-old Matt McLaughlin, said he looked out an upstairs window and saw very little amiss.

 

“Even people like next to the Capitol, they didn’t seem panicked at all,” McLaughlin said.

 

Schillinger, who was able to make her way around the Capitol from the Library of Congress, said along the way two officers told her someone had committed suicide.

Jay Bernard, 20, who is in the Navy and lives at Fort Meade, came up to the scene about 3:30 p.m. He had been in Alexandria earlier in the day, and decided to swing by downtown.

 

“I was hoping to get a closer look at the Capitol,” he said.

 

Now? “That’s not going to happen.”

 

Bernard called the incident “a bit unfortunate” especially because D.C. seemed to be hosting a high number of tourists Saturday in town to see the cherry blossoms.

 

“Always something going on here, though,” he said.