Man shoots, kills himself near White House
WASHINGTON— The Secret Service said a man shot himself to death Saturday as he stood near the fence along the north side of the White House.
President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump were in Florida at the time. The White House said Mr. Trump has been briefed on the shooting.
Authorities are seeking to notify the man’ s relative sand haven’ t released his name.
Speaking for the Secret Service, Mason F. Brayman said the man approached the fence shortly before noon and fired several rounds from a handgun. Mr. Brayman said none of the shots appear to have been directed toward the White House.
Secret Service officers set up a perimeter around the White House grounds Saturday afternoon, limiting access and rerouting tourists as they investigated.
Suspect used dad’s gun
A 19-year-old student suspected of fatally shooting his parents at a Central Michigan University dormitory had been acting so strangely the day before the killings that campus police talked to his mother and then took him to a hospital for suspected drug abuse, authorities said Saturday.
University police Chief Bill Yeagley told reporters that James Eric Davis Jr.’s parents had just picked him up from that hospital and brought him to his dorm to pack up for spring break when Friday’s shooting happened. He said the gun used in the shooting belonged to Davis’ father, James Davis Sr., a part-time police officer in the Chicago suburb of Bellwood.
Mr. Yeagley would not say whether the father had brought the gun to the university’s campus in Mount Pleasant, Mich., when picking up his son, but he noted that the shooting suspect can be seen on video in the dorm’s parking lot with the gun before he entered the residence hall where his parents were shot about 8:30 a.m.
Tunnel political football
WASHINGTON –– President Donald Trump has told Republicans not to approve funding for a $12.9 billion commuter railroad tunnel under the Hudson River, a major priority of Senate Democratic leader Charles E. Schumer, people with knowledge of the matter said.
Mr. Trump doesn’t want to advance the Gateway project, which would provide a rail link between New York and New Jersey, in part because Mr. Schumer, D-N.Y., held up the nomination of several of Mr. Trump’s nominees, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Committing money to Gateway also runs headon into the philosophy that’s driven Mr. Trump’s push for a trillion-dollar public works plan: that states and municipalities should bear more of the cost, and the federal government less, for fixing and upgrading U.S. infrastructure.