A Washington, DC, police officer fatally shot a man on Wednesday afternoon, police said.
The shooting — which came amid unrest in the capitol over police violence — took place around 4 p.m. in the southeast section of the city along the 200 block of Orange Street SE, Police Chief Peter Newsham said during a briefing at the scene.
Officers responded to the scene on a report of people with guns in a vehicle, Newsham said. As officers approached the vehicle, the people inside ran off.
“Uniformed police officers had information that there were guys in the neighborhood with guns, specifically,” Newsham said. “That’s what they were looking for and evidently that’s what they found.”
One man was shot during the incident and transported to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Newsham said two guns were recovered from the scene. It is not immediately clear what led the officer to fire at the man or what the man was doing at the time of the shooting.
“We believe the subject had a gun at the time,” Newsham said.
Local Council member Trayon White told reporters at the scene that the shooting victim is a “young African American male” who lived about two blocks from the shooting, WUSA9 reported.
Further details remain unclear.
