The person responsible for driving a car into a security barricade at the U.S. Capitol has been identified.
What We Know:
- The incident occurred last Friday at around 1 p.m., leaving one Capitol Police officer dead and another injured after 25-year-old Noah Green rammed a car into the two officers at a checkpoint outside the U.S. Capitol. Video shows Green exiting the vehicle wielding a knife.
- Authorities stated that Green failed to respond to verbal commands and lunged at officers with the knife. Despite Congress members’ absence due to spring recess, the suspect was shot by police and taken to a nearby hospital where he was pronounced dead a short time later.
- Acting Chief Yogananda Pittman identified the fallen police officer as William “Billy” Evans, an 18-year-veteran of the force and a member of the Capitol Division’s First Responder’s Unit.
“I just ask that the public continue to keep U.S. Capitol police and their families in your prayers. This has been an extremely difficult time for U.S. Capitol police after the events of Jan. 6, and now the events that have occurred here today,” Pittman said.
- D.C. Metropolitan Police reported that the crime did not “appear to be terrorism-related.” Facebook posts from Green’s now-deleted account revealed he was struggling in the last few years and described himself as a follower of the Nation of Islam and relied on his faith to keep him going.
- “To be honest, these past few years have been tough, and these past few months have been tougher,” he wrote. “I have been tried with some of the biggest, unimaginable tests in my life. I am currently now unemployed after I left my job partly due to afflictions, but ultimately, in search of a spiritual journey.”
President Joe Biden sent his condolences to the officer’s family, stating, “We know what a difficult time this has been for the Capitol, everyone who works there, and those who protect it,” the president said.