One dead, three injured in DC Metro shooting

A Metro employee was killed on the platform at the Potomac Avenue station in Washington, D.C., as he tried to stop a shooter who opened fire on commuters, injuring three others on Wednesday morning.

A man brandishing a weapon on a Metro bus followed one individual off the vehicle at 14th Street and Potomac Avenue in Southeast D.C. and shot at them, striking their legs, police said at a press conference, in the first of what authorities are calling a “series of individual events.”

The shooter then traveled down a station escalator toward the underground rail platform and got into a separate altercation with an individual attempting to purchase a train ticket, and again shoots the individual in the leg.

The shooter continued further into the station and engaged with a woman on the platform and “attempts to either rob her, confront her, or get in some kind of altercation with her,” explained Metropolitan Police Department Executive Assistant Chief Ashan Benedict.

One of two bystander Metro transit employees was shot and killed attempting to intervene to protect the woman. A second employee and Metro passengers are believed to have successfully disarmed the shooter to prevent further gunfire

“His heroism has to be recognized here today,” Benefit said of the slain employee, who was not named. “It’s unclear what the motive of all this is.”

“The fact that our citizens had to intervene with armed gunmen is disturbing to me,” he added.

The three injured individuals are in area hospitals with non-life-threatening injuries and the shooter is in custody.

“We don’t know a lot about this shooter at this moment, other than we had a person with a gun who created yet another tragedy in our city,” D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D) said at the presser.

The shooter, now in police custody, has not been publicly identified as of Wednesday afternoon.

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