Police have identified James Hodgkinson, 66, of Illinois as the man who allegedly fired dozens of shots at Republican members of Congress on Wednesday morning in Alexandria, Virginia, law enforcement told The Washington Post and NBC News.
President Donald Trump said later in the morning that Hodgkinson sustained fatal injuries during the incident. Law enforcement officials had not confirmed that. The suspect reportedly was wounded when Capitol Police officers returned fire.
House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) was shot in the hip while the lawmakers practiced for the annual congressional charity baseball game, authorities said. Five people, including the suspect, were transported to a local hospital.
“It would have been a massacre” if Capitol Police hadn’t been on the scene, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told MSNBC.
Authorities haven’t determined whether the attack was politically motivated, Tim Slater, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, said Wednesday during a press conference.
Hodgkinson was a member of the YMCA Alexandria, near where the shooting took place, a spokeswoman for the organization said in a statement. She said that while he appears to have visited the facility “frequently and at all hours of the day,” staff received “no complaints” about his behavior. He canceled his membership on Tuesday, she added.
Hodgkinson was arrested in 2006 “on suspicion of battery, domestic battery, criminal damage of property and reckless discharge of a firearm,” according to The Daily Beast, but the charges were dismissed. Police recovered a pocket knife and a shotgun at the time, according to an incident report obtained by HuffPost. (An earlier report from NBC News indicated that authorities had also recovered hair that had been pulled from the head of his girlfriend, but the report obtained by HuffPost does not include that detail.)
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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