“He’s got a gun!” Ballfield erupts in gunfire, chaos,
The ALEXANDRIA, VA. — Republican lawmakers and their aides had nearly finished batting practice at an Alexandria park Wednesday when they heard a single crack through the sticky early-morning air. For a moment, the field went quiet as they wondered what the noise was.
“He’s got a gun!” someone shouted.
Then came a torrent of bullets, and there, behind a chain-link fence near third base, was a man with a rifle.
One round hit Rep. Steve Scalise, the majority whip from Louisiana, in the hip, dropping him to ground. He screamed, then dragged himself to the grass outfield.
“Hit the ground!” people yelled.
Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., who was holding a bat and waiting to hit, briefly hid before diving into the firstbase dugout, where about a dozen people had taken cover. Inside, he found Zack Barth, a legislative aide who, after being struck in the leg, had hobbled all the way across the field.
“It’s not bad,” Barth assured him.
“Dude, you’ve got a hole in your calf,” Brooks responded, before cinching a tourniquet above the wound.
The 10-year-old son of Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, who coaches the GOP congressional baseball team, dove for cover under an SUV. Some of the 20 or so people at the field sprinted into the nearby dog park as others leaped a fence and fled. All around, bullets whistled overhead and ricocheted off the ground, spraying bits of gravel into the air.
“It was bedlam,” Brooks said.
By then, Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., had already hidden behind a wooden shack beyond the dugout.
In front of him were two members of Scalise’s security detail who had just popped out of a black SUV. They returned fire.
“Are you friendly? Are you friendly?” Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., shouted at one of them. “Yes,” the man answered. The shooter, wearing jeans and a blue shirt, methodically moved along the outside of the fence toward home plate.
Then another burst of gunfire.
Chunks of bark exploded off an oak tree just behind Loudermilk, an Air Force veteran, as he realized that Matt Mika, a Tysons Food lobbyist, was sprawled across the ground with a bullet wound in his chest. Every time they moved to help him, Loudermilk said, more shooting erupted.
“Someone help me,” screamed a woman nearby who’d been walking her four dogs and was now laying flat on the dirt. When no one could get to her, she belly-crawled under a car.
By then, the two Capitol Police officers, David Bailey and Crystal Griner, were in an intense, close-range firefight with the gunman, later identified as 66-yearold James T. Hodgkinson of Belleville, Ill.
Griner took a round to the ankle and slumped to the ground.
In an effort to draw fire away from the congressmen, Loudermilk said, Bailey shifted his position and was struck by shrapnel — but kept returning fire.
“If it hadn’t have been for those two officers,” Loudermilk said, “it would have been a carnage.”
Within minutes, Alexandria police arrived, their sirens wailing.
As one of the officers emerged from a car, Loudermilk said, Hodgkinson fired at her but missed, blowing out the window of a car on the street.
“There were people lying on the ground screaming, but he was targeting us,” Loudermilk said. “He wasn’t shooting at any of those folks. He was targeting members.”
More officers arrived, flushing the gunman from his cover. By then, Loudermilk said, Hodgkinson had switched from his rifle to a pistol.
“Drop your weapon,” an officer shouted. When Hodgkinson didn’t, they shot him.
When the gunfire stopped and Flake heard someone say the shooter was down, he sprinted out to Scalise, who asked for water. Flake pressed his hand against the wound until someone cut away Scalise’s uniform and a doctor applied gauze to stem the bleeding. Flake then found Scalise’s phone and called his wife so she wouldn’t hear what had happened from the news.
Bailey, one of the officers who had been injured, limped out onto the field to check on the lawmaker he had fought to protect.
Meanwhile, Loudermilk rushed to Mika. The congressman knelt down and prayed with him as paramedics flood the area, scrambling to treat six different people — including the shooter.
Seven miles away on Capitol Hill, the routine of a busy morning came to a halt.
Votes and speeches were canceled. President Donald Trump tweeted that “his thoughts and prayers” were with Scalise. Lawmakers stared at televisions, awaiting updates on their colleagues. A psychologist offered stress counseling.
At the Democrats’ baseball practice, members were called off the field and held in the dugout under police protection. Several gathered to pray.