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Police identify 'person of interest' in Washington DC shooting

INTERNATIONAL: Police issued a bulletin seeking a man they identified as a "person of interest" in a shooting that left four people wounded near an elite prep school in Washington, D.C., on Friday (April 22) as investigators searched door-to-door for the culprit.

Assistant DC Police Chief Stuart Emerman told reporters they were seeking 23-year-old Raymond Spencer, of suburban Fairfax, Virginia, identified by investigators of through social media postings.

"We'd like to speak to Mr. Spencer, figure out if he has any role in this or any connection to this, and hopefully that will lead us in the direction to identify what happened here and why," Emerman said.

Washington D.C. Police released photos of Spencer on their Twitter account.

Police did not specify the nature of those postings. But an individual identifying himself as Raymond Spencer had posted series of messages in the online platform 4Chan with video that appeared to show gunshots fired from the vantage point of an upper-floor window, with the misspelled label: "Shool shooting!"

Three people struck by gunfire near the private college preparatory school were taken to area hospitals - a 54-year-old man and a woman in her mid-30s with severe wounds, and a 12-year-old girl wounded in the arm, police said.

A fourth victim, a woman in her mid-60s, was treated on the scene for a slight graze wound, Emerman said.

Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said that the shooting was another example of the need for stricter gun control measures.

“We have experienced this too much in our country, the epidemic of the gun violence, the easy access to weapons has got to stop. People should not be scared taking their children to school,” Bowser said.

Eyewitnesses told Reuters and local media outlets they heard bursts of gunfire in the upscale Van Ness neighborhood of northwest Washington adjacent to the Edmund Burke School just as classes were about to be dismissed for the day.

One man told television station WUSA-TV he heard rapid-fire shots lasting about a minute, then saw a woman running out of a building who appeared to have been grazed by gunfire, followed by other individuals who were apparently wounded.

Authorities said they had no motive for the shooting, which took place along Connecticut Avenue, a major thoroughfare through the city.

Assistant DC Police Chief Emerman said police had fanned out across the neighborhood looking for possible perpetrators, and that several individuals seen fleeing the scene were briefly detained for questioning, though none was believed to have been involved.



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