Five people were shot Thursday morning at and outside a Vida Fitness gym in Washington, D.C.'s Logan Circle neighborhood — roughly a mile north of the White House — and police say the suspected gunman is dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Metropolitan Police Department interim Chief Jeffery W. Carroll told reporters that one person is dead and four others were shot. One of the wounded is in critical condition; the other three suffered what Carroll described as non-life-threatening injuries. The identity of the person who died has not been released.
A witness at the gym gave the Associated Press a blunt account of what he saw. James Spellman said he was inside just after 8 a.m. when he heard gunfire and watched a man fall. "He was instantly dead. He had been shot in the neck," Spellman told the AP.
Another witness told NBC4 Washington she was on a treadmill when the shots rang out. She and others ran from the building and took shelter in the nearby Call Your Mother deli. Oscar Vasquez, a manager at that deli, told the station he heard the building's fire alarms go off, and then, a minute or two later, the gunfire. "We heard really loud, aggressive gunshots. Not like pistols or anything," Vasquez said.
D.C. Councilmember Brooke Pinto said in a statement on social media that the shooting took place "at and outside" the Vida Fitness gym and urged people to stay away from the area. The block is one of the busiest in the city — a Whole Foods, restaurants, apartments and the gym all sit within steps of 15th and P streets NW.
After the initial shooting, the suspect barricaded himself on a high floor of the apartment building above the gym, a federal law enforcement source confirmed to NBC4. Carroll said the apartment is believed to belong to the suspect. While barricaded, the gunman spoke with police by phone — and then, Carroll said, officers "heard a gunshot, and he stopped communicating with them." Police later found the suspect, a white male, with a gunshot wound in the apartment building. "He did shoot himself," Carroll said.
" A federal law enforcement official said the situation had shifted from an active-shooter response to a barricaded-subject response, and that no other individual is believed to be at the scene.
The response was massive. Dozens of police cars and emergency vehicles flooded 15th Street and Rhode Island Avenue NW, and officers in tactical gear were seen arriving on foot. The FBI, ATF Washington, D.C. Fire, Metro Transit Police, Homeland Security and the National Guard were among the agencies on scene, according to NBC4, and multiple ambulance buses pulled up around 8:45 a.m. Metro Transit Police said they are increasing patrols in the area.
Vida Fitness issued a statement asking members to avoid the Logan Circle location and surrounding area until further notice, and to follow law enforcement instructions if they were in the vicinity.
It is not yet known whether the victims were shot inside the building or outside it — police have not confirmed that detail, and Carroll noted the investigation is in its early stages.
Our Take
This is the second time in a little over a year that a Thursday morning in the nation's capital has been shattered by a mass shooting at a gym, and Washington's political class will spend the day issuing statements about "common sense" while offering nothing that addresses what actually happened here. Read Carroll's words again: a man with a handgun, a conflict with a homeowners association, five people shot, one of them dead before he hit the floor. None of the gun control bills Democrats push in the wake of every one of these tragedies would have stopped a lone gunman walking into a building he apparently lived in or had access to.
What patriots should demand instead is the truth about how a man with a grudge against his own HOA was able to turn one of the most heavily policed square miles on earth into a killing field at 8 a.m. on a weekday. The FBI, ATF and National Guard were all on scene — after the fact. That's not a knock on the cops who ran toward the gunfire; it's a reality check for the people who keep telling Americans that more government is the answer to everything.
And spare a thought for the people who did the right thing: the gym-goers who ran, the deli workers who sheltered them, the witnesses who stayed to talk to reporters. They did more in ten minutes than most of Congress does in a year. Our prayers are with the family of the victim and with the four wounded Americans fighting for their lives in D.C. hospitals tonight.
