Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, said the suspected gunman in the shooting of two National Guard members will be charged with first-degree murder after the death of a guardsman.
“There are certainly many more charges to come, but we are upgrading the initial charges of assault to murder in the first degree,” Pirro said in an interview Friday morning on Fox News.
US Army Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, 20, originally from Webster Springs, West Virginia, died after being shot Wednesday in an attack near the White House. Pirro said the other guard member, US Air Force Staff Sergeant Andrew Wolfe, 24, remains in critical condition.
Federal authorities have identified the suspected shooter as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, an Afghan national who previously worked with US forces and the CIA in Afghanistan before he arrived in the US in 2021. US Attorney General Pam Bondi said Thursday that she would seek the death penalty for Lakanwal if either of the shooting victims died.
The shooting has led the administration to move to further crack down on immigration, with President Donald Trump saying late Thursday that he would halt admissions from developing nations and revoke citizenship from some naturalized migrants, though he did not offer details on what countries would be targeted or how he would implement those plans.
The White House has already moved to halt Afghan immigration proceedings and ordered reviews for those admitted into the US.
Authorities are treating the shootings as a terror case but have not publicly described the suspect’s motive. Lakanwal lived in Washington state with his wife and children. Law enforcement officials have said he drove to the nation’s capital with the intent of carrying out the attack.
“We are hoping that the more information we can get, and the more investigation that is going on, 24/7 now, around the clock in Washington, the more we will find out about what actually happened in terms of this individual, even being in this country and being in a position to ambush and shoot down an innocent young woman,” Pirro said Friday.
Asked about a potential motive, Pirro said only that it was still a “fluid situation” and that the investigation was ongoing.
“As you well know there are a great deal of people working, as I said, around the clock, trying to put together exactly what was going on,” she added.
