A woman who rammed her car into a White House barrier and then led the police on a wild, high-speed chase through the heart of Washington on Thursday, was shot and killed near the US Capitol in a dramatic episode that triggered a lockdown, with House and Senate sessions suspended and lawmakers asked to take cover.
A Secret Service agent and a police officer were injured as the confrontation went on with the woman driving her black Infiniti recklessly through the high-security zone in defiance of a hot pursuit and the firing of multiple shots by the police.
Coming as it did, barely a fortnight after the mass shooting rampage at the Washington Navy Yard, the incident unnerved Washingtonians, all the more so that it happened in such a high-secure enclave of the national Capital.
The woman herself, it turned out later, was unarmed. And travelling with her in the backseat of the car was her one-year-old daughter, who escaped unhurt in the eight-minute drama. The woman was identified as Miriam Carey, a 34-year-old African-American dental hygienist from Stamford, Connecticut.
Subsequent media reports quoted her New York-based mother, Idella Carey, as saying that her daughter was suffering from post-partum depression following the birth of the child. “She was depressed. She was hospitalised,” Idella Carey said, adding her daughter had “no history of violence”. She also did not know why she was in Washington.
Initially, there were fears that it might be an act of terror, but all that was ruled out soon after the drama ended. Police said the woman tried to breach two Washington landmarks, but called it an “isolated incident”. The lockdown was lifted after about half an hour.