One police officer was killed and a second injured on Friday after a man rammed a car into a barricade outside the US Capitol, before emerging wielding a knife.
A video showed the driver of the crashed car emerging with a knife in his hand and starting to run at the pair of officers, Capitol Police Acting Chief Yogananda Pittman told reporters. The driver stabbed one of the officers, Pittman said. Authorities shot the suspect, who died later in hospital.
Police identified the slain officer as William ‘Billy’ Evans, an 18-year veteran who was a member of the department’s first responders unit.
‘This has been an extremely difficult time for US Capitol Police after the events of January 6 and now the events that have occurred here today.’
US networks identified the dead suspect as 25-year-old Noah Green, a member of the black nationalist Nation of Islam movement led by the antisemitic Louis Farrakhan.
In a recent Facebook post, Green spoke of numerous personal problems, saying he was unemployed and had been ‘tried with some of the biggest, unimaginable tests in my life’. Green said Farrakhan and his faith had been carrying him through.
US President Joe Biden said in a statement he and First Lady Jill Biden were ‘heartbroken’ over the killing of Evans.
[Image: Phillip Roulain from Pixabay]