It appears to be the Rayburn Office Building. All staff have been ordered to “shelter in place”
Listen live to WTOP radio, and read their coverage.
Here’s the first AP report…
WASHINGTON (AP) – Police sealed off the Capitol on Friday after receiving reports of gunfire in a House office building across the street.
Capitol police are investigating “the sound of gunfire in the garage level of the Rayburn House Office Building,” said an announcement on the internal Capitol voice alarm system.
The Senate was in session at the time, but the House was not. Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., conducting a House Intelligence Committee hearing, interrupted a witness to request those attending the meeting to remain in the room and said the doors must be closed.
“It’s a little unsettling to get a Blackberry message put in front of you that says there’s gunfire in the building,” he said.
Liveblogging: Rep. Jack Kingston’s office at Jack’s Blog
Ugly American
Update (paul) After 90 minutes of it looking like a false alarm, FoxNews is reporting that they have reports that someone with a gun was apprehended. — But details are so sketchy you can’t put too much stock in that. — Reuters is reporting they are RE-locking down the Capitol after lifting it. Sounds like something is up.
Cap Police Presser: Reports of shots fired, no suspects, NO INJURIES. — If I can paraphrase, “We got a phone call of shots fired and we’re checking it out.” — SINGLE report. Maybe it is much ado about nothing.
I’ll say this, (from the TV) it looks like the Cap police are ALL OVER this thing.
Cap police presser says Reuters wrong (above) Capitol open. Fox is running they have a report that 2 women reported a guy with a gun in a staff gym. Potentially apprehended. More questions than answers.
Update (Kim): Catherine Herridge of Fox is reporting that the Capitol Hill news conference has been moved back from 1:15 to 1:30pm
Update (Kim): Rep. Jack Kingston issued a statement saying that the woman who was taken to the hospital was a member of his staff. She was not injured but was “shaken up” by everything that has happened.
(Paul) For those of you following this by internet….. What apparently is going on is that they are searching every room in the massive building. That takes time. Almost 3 hours into this we still are basically in a holding patern.
3:23pm All Clear is sounded. Apparently the whole thing was a false alarm from an anonymous phone call. FAR FAR be it from me to call this an “over-reaction” but it seems like we should try to find a better way to handle things like this.
3:55pm (Kim) Kimberly Schneider of the Capitol Hill Police reports that construction workers working in the basement of the Rayburn Building made the loud sounds that the anonymous caller, referenced above, said sounded like gunfire.
Hey There,
I thought you might be interested to know that there is live coverage of the Capitol building in Pipeline RIGHT NOW! YOu can watch it right from your desktop.
There are reports shots have been fired in Rayburn House Office Building across street from U.S. Capitol. Entire Capitol complex is locked down.
CNN Pipeline is an online, commercial-free multiple live-news feed. It showcases four simultaneous news feeds from around the world and an on-demand function that allows you to select from a variety of news stories.
Please let your members know that they can go to http://www.cnn.com and click on the Pipeline link to watch it *live* and get a two week free trial.
Thanks and have a great day!
Karen
Is there anyone who parks in this specific parking garage that drives a car that is capable of backfiring?
I don’t bet there are very many 1980s pick-ups driving into the basement of the US capital.
Okay, where’s Dick Cheney?
Well that’s one way the senate might get the point that their vote yesterday ignored the will of the people.
From CNN feed:
BREAKING NEWS ‘Police are investigating reports of the sound of gunfire in the garage level of the Rayburn House Office Building. Officials have not yet confirmed whether there was gunfire, who might be involved, or what has happened, but we’re willing to speculate!
(Video clip of past office shootings plays, title: Death at the Capitol appears in the foreground)
Let’s go there LIVE!
‘Right now we’re reporting LIVE from the Rayburn House Office Building, where we have not confirmed that anything has happened. We will continue to stand around and guess about it until somebody tells us something different.
WTOP reporter states a person was taken out on a gurney to ambulance and driven away. He also cites video photographer (second hand) with telephoto lens that person on gurney was a black woman.
CNN comment spamming. Interesting.
Paul – hope that wasn’t aimed at me. My comment was wondering if it could have been a repeat or continuation of a previous altercation.
Anyone know the wherabouts of Jake Bauer since Monday night?
James,
Duh! He’s on a ship back to China.
Or so he would have us believe……
CNN comment spamming. Interesting.
I thought the same thing.
FoxNews is reporting that they have reports that someone with a gun was apprehended
Leave it to Fox to get it wrong, as usual….
Dang, were those union workers eating burritos AGAIN?
>FoxNews is reporting that they have reports that someone with a gun was apprehended
>Leave it to Fox to get it wrong, as usual….
No, Lee, they just forwarded the information they had in real time. People told Fox something that was later found to be incorrect but in real time Fox said they had these reports.
That’s the exact way Fox should have handled it. If they sat on it they would have been attacked for not reporting it.
Leave it to Lee to misunderstand reality again, as usual.
Sheik YB
Lee prefers news like ABC’s Denny Hastert is under investigation story, or CBS’s TANG, or the NY-Times’ no starvation under Stalinism.
Hmmm. Until the “construction workers” explanation, everything I saw about this said there was also the smell of gunpowder (cordite).
I’m trying to remember what it was called — it’s been several years — but there was a tool for driving nails into concrete. You put a .22 blank in the middle and a nail in one end, and you hit the other end with a hammer. The blank would go off and drive the nail into the concrete. And yes, there would be the smell of cordite afterward.