WASHINGTON, DC — Twelve people were killed and a number of others injured at the U.S. Navy Yard in a shooting Monday morning, Washington Police Chief Cathy Lanier told reporters. Among those shot were two police officers.
Shots reportedly first rang out at 8:20 a.m. in Building 197, headquarters of the Naval Sea Systems Command, which is about 1.5 miles southeast of the U.S. Capitol and the National Mall.
Multiple victims inside the Navy headquarters are dead, according to Lanier. Washington Mayor Vincent Gray described the event as an “isolated incident” and said that no other facilities in the city are involved.
Monday’s attack has resulted in the most fatalities in a mass shooting this year.
One of the police officers wounded in the shooting is in surgery and in stable condition at a hospital, according to Lanier.
Washington Hospital Center representative Janis Orlowski said it is treating three victims, all of them in critical condition, and it expects to receive more victims.
Lanier said one suspect is dead. Initially police reported there were two additional suspects, but they have since cleared one of them, a white male with a pistol, wearing a Navy-style short-sleeve uniform and a beret.
The FBI has confirmed to Al Jazeera that the name of the dead suspect is Aaron Alexis.
The other, reportedly a black male about 50 years old with a rifle and wearing a drab olive military uniform, is still being sought.
It’s not clear what, if any, relationship the shooters have to the military. About 3,000 people work at the Navy headquarters.
‘It was like a battleground’
Law-enforcement officials from various agencies have cordoned off the facility, as police cars, military vehicles, ambulances and other emergency officials entered and left. Federal workers were seen streaming from the premises.
Carlos Perez and Carole Tracy — who traveled to Washington from Poquoson, Va., for the Nationals game against the Braves Monday night — were staying at the Courtyard Marriott down the street from Navy Yard.
They said the sound of sirens woke them and from their 14th-floor hotel room they saw police administering CPR to a man lying on the ground on M Street and New Jersey Avenue. Then, they said, mayhem broke loose as law-enforcement officials flooded the scene.
“There were hundreds of them racing down the street cordoning off the area,” Tracy said. “It was like a battleground.”
The Nationals Stadium is being used as a holding area for families awaiting word from employees still inside the command facility. The Washington Nationals baseball team postponed their Monday night game against the Atlanta Braves.
Patricia Ward, a witness who was in a cafeteria at the Navy Yard buying breakfast when shots were fired, said, “I heard three gunshots — pop, pop, pop.”
An Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms special-response team that worked on the Boston Marathon bombing has been sent to the scene.
Six local schools are on lockdown. Federal facilities in the city are also on high alert. The Senate complex has been placed on locked down “out of an abundance of caution,” according to the Senate’s Sergeant at Arms.
Navy Yard personnel were ordered to shelter in place, according to a release from U.S. Navy.
Another witness told ABC, “I was on the phone, and somebody came by my desk and said, ‘Hey, this is not a fire alarm. Somebody has been shot in the building.’ So we went around and tried to get people out of the building, and as we were exiting the back door, we noticed him around the hall. We stepped around the corner, we heard shots, and as he came around the corner he aimed his gun at us and fired at least two and three shots, and we ran out of the building … After we left the building, there were still shots in the building.”
Another witness told the station that they encountered a shooter as they were trying to escape.
“He was going (up) the hall. We couldn’t see his face, but we could see him with the rifle, and he raised and aimed at us and fired, and he hit high on the wall just as we were trying to leave,” the witness said.
Air Force Tech Sgt. David Reyes waited outside the Navy Yard for his wife, who works in human resources in the building next to the Naval Sea Systems Command, which was still on lockdown Monday afternoon.
Reyes said she texted him that morning to tell him all employees were told to stay where they were as the situation unfolded. Law-enforcement officials continued to search rooms one by one to clear them before anyone could be released. Reyes spent the morning feeding her news before making his way to the scene to see what he could find out.
“I just want to get her out of there, but the best thing for them right now is just to stay put.” He said he wasn’t particularly surprised that a shooter had managed to penetrate such a secure facility.
“Honestly, it can happen anywhere,” Reyes said. “You just hope and pray people aren’t that demented.”
