A US Capitol Police officer was killed and another wounded when a man hit them with a vehicle on a barricade outside the Capitol building on Friday. The suspect was shot by the police after getting out of the car and attacking the police. He later died at a nearby hospital.
Police officer William “Billy” Evans, an 18-year-old veteran of the police force, was identified as the police officer killed on Friday. Capitol Police said the other officer was in stable condition, with injuries that were not life-threatening.
Police sources told CBS News that the suspect was identified as 25-year-old Indiana Noah R. Green, who was not on police radar.
Green, an African-American, was on no watch list and appeared to have acted alone, according to a federal police officer and a Capitol source.
The police said Green threw his car at the police at 1:02 pm and then got out of the car and launched himself at them. The officers then shot the suspect, Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman told a news conference on Friday. Several sources said one of the policemen was stabbed in the face, but it was not clear which policeman was stabbed.
Shortly after 1 pm, the Capitol Police sent an initial alert to Congress officials, alerting them to an “external security threat”. In about an hour and a half, the police sent out another alert saying that the threat had been “neutralized”.
In a statement, President Biden said that he and First Lady Jill Biden “were heartbroken” upon hearing of the attack, adding that he was receiving information about the incident from his homeland security adviser. Biden, who was at Camp David over the weekend, ordered the White House flags to be reduced to half the staff.
J. Scott Applewhite / AP
The incident came almost three months after protesters stormed the United States Capitol in a deadly attack on January 6. The riot resulted in the deaths of five people, including Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick. Two Capitol police officers also died of suicide after the attack and dozens of police officers were injured.
The union representing officials said Friday’s attack was “a tragic situation that adds up to a very difficult year for our members”.
After the January attack, fences were erected around the Capitol complex and thousands of National Guard soldiers were sent to Washington. That security fence was knocked down last week, although an inner fence layer around the Capitol building remains in place.
The barricade where the incident occurred is a checkpoint on the Senate side of the Capitol. It was put in place after the September 11 terrorist attacks to protect the Capitol from possible car bombs, noted Congressman Tim Ryan, who chairs the committee that oversees the Capitol Police.
There were fewer people than usual at the Capitol on Friday, as Congress is in recess; most legislators are in their home states. Other Congress officials, as well as reporters and police, were in their offices.
Andres Triay, Michael Kaplan, Kris Van Cleave and Rebecca Kaplan contributed to the report.