April 23 (UPI) — Police in Washington, D.C., fatally shot a woman wearing a special police officer’s uniform on Saturday who was reportedly armed with a gun and acting erratically, authorities said.
Officers responded to multiple reports of a shooting just before 6 a.m. Saturday morning in northwest D.C. and found one woman who had been shot at least once in a home, Metropolitan Police Department Chief Robert Contee said during a press conference. Officers rendered first-aid and she was taken to a hospital.
Police found a second woman on the porch of a neighbor’s home, allegedly smashing windows and brandishing a firearm. She was wearing a special police officer’s uniform depicting a name that officers later learned was not hers, Contee said.
“The officers asked the person to put down the firearm that she was in possession of. They ordered the person to the ground. Ultimately the person in the special police officer’s uniform was shot by a metropolitan police officer,” Contee said.
Both women lived on the block where the shooting occurred, Contee added.
The woman in uniform was not an official special police officer, the department later announced on Twitter.
A special police officer is a private law enforcement professional commissioned by the city. They usually work as security guards, Contee said.
Saturday’s shooting came less than a day after a gunman opened fire in Washington’s Van Ness neighborhood, hitting and injuring at least four people.
That shooter, who fired from an apartment window toward people on the street below, recorded the incident and posted it to the online internet forum 4chan.
The victims — which included a 12-year-old-girl — are all expected to recover. Police identified 23-year-old Raymond Spencer as a person of interest in the shooting; Spencer was later found dead. Authorities believe he killed himself as police entered the apartment.
