Busy morning crowds in Washington, D.C.'s Logan Circle ran for cover after a gunman opened fire at a local gym, VIDA Fitness, killing at least one person and injuring at least four others.
It's unclear if those four injured were also at the gym.
The gunman left the gym area, entered a nearby apartment building where he barricaded himself. Jeffery W. Carroll, the interim Police Chief of the Metropolitan Police Department, who briefed the public this morning, said at the time of the briefing that the shooter had shot himself.
A police spokeswoman later confirmed to NPR that the gunman died.
The Logan Circle neighborhood sits about one mile north of the White House. The block where the shooting occurred, along 15th Street Northwest, is lined with apartment buildings, a church, coffee shops and restaurants.
Residents around the area described a massive law enforcement presence, including FBI agents and SWAT teams, swarming the area minutes after gunshots rang out. Residents were sent emergency text messages ordering them to remain sheltered in place. That order was lifted at around 11:30 a.m.
The first call for help came in at 8 a.m. from people inside the gym, Carroll said. Officers and other emergency responders were on scene within 30 seconds, he said. Responders found one adult man who was shot inside the gym.
Witnesses on scene told NPR that VIDA requires visitors to tap in to gain access to the fitness area. Carroll told media he believes the gunman was a member.
Tinbete Ermyas, an editor at NPR, was working out at the gym when the shooting started. He and other gym-goers became aware something was wrong when they heard "a very loud bang," Ermyas said.
"People kind of looked around at each other ... wondering what it was. Some people thought that maybe it was some weights that had been dropped. But it just sounded way too loud," he said. "The bang sort of shook everybody."
Shortly after the bang, came the screams.
"That's when we realized that it was a shooting," he said. He and others ran off the gym floor through an emergency exit that led them to a laundry room. That's where for about 20 minutes, he and others hid until police came to escort them out.
As they exited, they saw the body of the man who was shot.
"It was just laying there, just very bloodied and terrible. A guy that goes to the gym regularly. I see him every morning, just lying in a pool of blood. It was terrible," Ermyas said.
After the gunman barricaded himself in the apartment building, police tried for about an hour to get him to surrender safely. But Carroll said that while officers were engaging with the suspect, they heard a gunshot.
It's unclear if the gunman and the victims knew each other. Carroll said more investigation is needed.
'They were so shocked and afraid'
Next to the gym at Call Your Mother Deli, Oscar Vazquez, the manager, said he heard the fire alarm going off next door. He and his co-worker Cesar Miranda, a 22-year-old worker at the deli, said they thought it was a regular fire alarm until "we heard like 7 or 8 gunshots," Miranda said.
Vazquez said people started running out of the building said he tried to get as many people as possible into the deli.
"We're really worried about the people that live in the building," Vazquez said. He said they have a lot of friends and customers that live there. He said: "It was really scary. It really happened out of nowhere, just hordes of people just running down from that block."
Miranda said law enforcement were on the scene quickly.
"We saw so many people running from the area, like so many people," Miranda continued. "There was so shocked and afraid. They even started falling into the chairs that we had in the patio."
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