DIPLOMAT’S SON DETAILS MOMENTS OF TERROR Shooter traced in online profile
WASHINGTON, April 26, (Agencies): Authorities continued to explore the mysterious past and motivations of a gunman who they said fired randomly at people, striking four, in Northwest Washington as new and frightening details began to emerge about the potential lethality of the attack.
Officials said police have not developed a motive for Friday afternoon’s shootings in the Van Ness area, but it appeared the suspected gunman, 23-year-old Raymond Spencer of Fairfax County, Va., engaged with Wikipedia pages related to the recent subway attack in New York City and a 2018 school shooting in Florida.
Police on Saturday officially identified Spencer as the man they believe committed the attack, having previously said that authorities were searching for him as a person of interest before declaring a suspect was found dead. Authorities said he killed himself inside the fifth-floor story apartment where he fired more than 100 rounds near Van Ness Street and Connecticut Avenue. Multiple law enforcement officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive investigation, said Spencer’s only known tie to the District appears to be that sparsely furnished apartment at the AVA Van Ness, in which they found assault rifles, at least one handgun, a tripod stand for a firearm and a mattress on the floor.
The apartment that police are describing as a “sniper’s nest” overlooks Edmund Burke School in the 2900 block of Van Ness Street, which appears to have drawn the shooter’s attention at afternoon dismissal.
D.C. Police Chief Robert J. Contee III said numerous buildings and vehicles may have been struck by gunfire, and police officials said they believe two shops and a vehicle in Cleveland Park, nearly a mile from the apartment building, were hit.
“There are probably going to be a lot of bullet holes we’re going to find,” Contee said as the search for evidence expanded northward on Connecticut Avenue, one of the busiest corridors in the District, with restaurants, shops, apartments and foreign embassies.
Bullets fired from weapons used in the shooting, the chief said, have “the capacity to travel for an extended distance.”
Police said four people were injured in the shooting, including a man in his 50s who is a parttime security guard at Edmund Burke, a woman in her 30s and another woman in her 60s who was grazed by a bullet as she waited in her vehicle to pick up a child. A 12-year-old girl also was shot.
Authorities expressed amazement that more people were not struck or even killed, and said it will take police many days to collect evidence and fully document the damage over a vast number of city blocks.
Efforts to reach Spencer’s relatives over the past two days have been unsuccessful, and residents of the AVA Van Ness complex described only fleeting encounters with him.
Shelby Magid, who lives on the fifth floor, said Spencer would have blended in at the building that is home to many young people. Magid, 28, recalled seeing him once or twice while on the way to the elevator but said she had never interacted with him.
“It’s a quiet hall,” said Magid, who wasn’t home when the shootings occurred.
Another fifth-floor resident, Diana Camosy, 34, took cover on the bedroom floor next to her husband most of Friday afternoon, refreshing Twitter for updates. Camosy, who was using headphones, and her husband, who had been on a work Zoom call, heard the gunshots but dismissed them as noise from construction.
On Friday night, the Fairfax County police SWAT team and D.C. police searched Spencer’s apartment at the Julian at Fair Lakes and said they had only one prior contact with the man. A county police spokesman described the call as a noise complaint and said Spencer had complied with officers.
In a text message, Camosy said she looked out her window and saw students with backpacks running down an alley.