The marbled halls of Congress echoed with the report of gunfire, sending hundreds of people to run for cover or to flee in terror. In a harrowing few minutes, the august U.S. Capitol, packed with tourists, became a crime scene, underscoring that no place is immune from acts of random violence.
The actions of a lone, troubled gunman, dressed in khakis and a fedora, left two police officers dead, a tourist scarred and wounded, and the sense of security at the Capitol shattered. But officials vowed to open the building to the public Saturday.
The chaos was brought under control quickly as the gunman, himself wounded, was apprehended.
Police identified the suspect as Russell E. Weston Jr., a 41-year-old man with a history of mental troubles from Valmeyer, Ill., a Mississippi River town near St. Louis.
The carnage he is suspected of triggering became clear as the two police officers were pronounced dead at nearby hospitals and the wounded tourist, a 24-year-old woman, lay on a stretcher bleeding from the head and leg on the Capitol steps.
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Weston underwent nearly four hours of surgery and was expected to survive. No charges had been filed against him as of early Saturday. The killing of a federal law-enforcement officer can carry the death penalty.
Little was known about any motive. One federal law enforcement source said Weston’s name was in the database maintained by the U.S. Secret Service as a possible “low-level” threat to President Clinton.
Weston reportedly had been in Valmeyer as recently as Thursday, and family members there said they recently had argued with him about his killing of perhaps a dozen cats.
A truck registered in his name was found near the Capitol on Friday.
As reconstructed by the accounts of witnesses and law-enforcement officers, the rampage began at about 2:40 p.m. (CDT) Friday, shortly after the House had taken its last vote of the day. Some members had left the building to head home for the weekend.
The wife and top aides of Republican Rep. Dennis Hastert of Illinois had gathered in his office, awaiting him to celebrate the passage of his health-care legislation with a modest array of potato chips, soft drinks and pecan pie.
Witnesses said the suspect entered the building through the main entrance, rushed through metal detectors that screen tourists and soon opened fire. Capitol Police Officer Jacob Chestnut was killed in the encounter. Only about 20 yards away, tourists were buying congressional souvenirs.
Moving quickly, the gunman went about 10 feet and turned left into a hallway before opening a door marked “Private,” an entrance to the office of Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), the House majority whip.
Just behind the door was John Gibson, another Capitol police officer, who served on DeLay’s protective detail.
The two exchanged gunfire, witnesses said, with Gibson managing to get off shots that wounded Weston while the officer himself had been shot and was near death.
“I was on the phone and I heard what sounded like metal banging together,” said Tom Rudy, an aide who was in DeLay’s suite of offices when the shooting began. “All of a sudden the sounds became more prominent because he (the suspect) opened the door.”
At first, Rudy said, everyone got under their desks, then they decided to run into a back room. When they came out, the gunman had been disarmed.
“There was an officer straddling him, pointing a gun at him. He had already disarmed him,” Rudy said. “He looked about 40-ish. He was bleeding from his side . . . and he was wearing a fedora hat.
“The whole office believes Mr. Gibson saved our lives.”
In Hastert’s nearby offices, Scott Palmer, Hastert’s chief of staff, said: “I heard this noise. And I heard this tremendous crash. I thought one of the bookshelves had fallen over on a computer. All of a sudden there was another burst of gunfire.”
Palmer tried to slam an office door closed only to find a leg wedged between the door and frame. At first, he thought it might be the gunman. It turned out to be another Hastert aide, Sam Lancaster.
“It was pretty scary. We didn’t know whether someone was going to come blazing through the door or what,” Palmer said.
After a period of quiet, aides gathered in DeLay’s office, Palmer said, “praying, praying that Gibson would be OK.”
He was not. Capitol Police brought the flag over the U.S. Capitol to half staff as the sun sank several hours after the eruption of violence, signaling that Gibson and Chestnut had succumbed to their wounds.
Chestnut did not have a chance, apparently never drawing his weapon as he was shot through the head when the gunman opened fire at the metal detector.
The slain men drew praise from members of Congress and the president. Gibson and Chestnut were both 18-year veterans of a force created during the early days of the republic to handle security around what is often called “the people’s house.” They were the first Capitol Police officers to die in the line of duty, according to a congressional historian.
But the gunman’s ability to blast his way through the security system and then nearly penetrate the innermost offices of congressional leaders is likely to lead to a major reassessment of the way Congress is protected.
With such an incident, Capitol Police will routinely reassess security procedures, said Sgt. Dan Nichols, a spokesman for the force, but he gave no indication that major changes would be made.
It was the first shooting in the Capitol since 1954, when four Puerto Rican nationalists opened fire from the House gallery and wounded five members of Congress.
In 1983, a bomb exploded near the Senate chamber, causing the Capitol Police to strengthen security to make access to the building more difficult.
“These officers died bravely while performing their duty to protect the nation’s Capitol,” Nichols said. “This is indeed a sad day . . . for the United States Congress.”
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According to police and Capitol sources, the gunman’s .38 caliber Smith & Wesson pistol set off the alarm of the metal detector at the Capitol’s main entrance on the first floor, where thousands of tourists, many of them schoolchildren, are ushered into the building.
The incident caused swift reaction by the Capitol Police–and by some members of Congress.
Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), a heart surgeon, was presiding on the Senate floor when the shooting occurred. He rushed to the scene and treated the victims, including Weston. Then he accompanied them to the hospital.
The scene at the Capitol on a hot summer day was surreal, with ambulances’ and police cars’ lights flashing. A medical helicopter landed on the parking lot on the Capitol’s East Wing and then whisked away at least one of the officers.
Blood on his khaki pants, Ronald Beamish, 69, of Gloucester, England, said he heard the shots. “Everybody scattered. I saw an officer on the floor. I went over to him and felt his pulse. He was trying to say something to me. I could not hear what he was saying. I yelled, `Get a stretcher.’ I told the officer, `You’ll be all right.’ “
Beamish said the officer appeared to be shot in the head.
Mara Cleary, a legislative aide to Sen. Robert Torricelli (D-N.J.), said she was giving a tour to a family from Washington and a child from Belfast when shots rang out.
“People just started running,” she said. The child “flipped out” when the shots went off. “We were trying to isolate her from that kind of thing,” the aide said, referring to violence in Northern Ireland.