Political News

Guard Shoots Man Who Forced His Way Into Washington TV Station

WASHINGTON — A security guard shot and wounded a man who forced his way into a local television station, police said Monday, stoking renewed fears that journalists have become targets in a highly polarized political environment.

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By
Adam Goldman
, New York Times

WASHINGTON — A security guard shot and wounded a man who forced his way into a local television station, police said Monday, stoking renewed fears that journalists have become targets in a highly polarized political environment.

The shooting occurred about 3 p.m. at WTTG Fox 5’s building in Northwest Washington when the irate man kicked his way through two sets of glass doors to enter the lobby, police said.

In the lobby, the man was confronted by a security guard employed by the station. The guard fired her weapon, striking the man apparently in the torso. The man was not armed, police said. Nobody else was injured.

Normally, the doors can be opened only with a building pass or if a security guard buzzes in a visitor, said Dustin Sternbeck, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Police Department.

Police said the man, 38, whom they declined to identify, was conscious and in stable condition when he was taken to a hospital. His motive was unknown, but he appeared to be angry and agitated at the time of the attack, Sternbeck said.

Police said they were interviewing witnesses and reviewing surveillance video of the man breaking through the glass doors, which Fox 5 broadcast.

The shooting at the station comes almost four months after a man stormed a newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland, and opened fire with a shotgun. The chilling attack killed five people and left the world of journalism reeling.

The suspect, Jarrod W. Ramos, had filed a defamation lawsuit against the newspaper and sent hostile messages directed at the paper’s reporters on Twitter. He was charged with five counts of murder.

President Donald Trump condemned the newsroom shooting and offered his condolences, but he has often portrayed the news media as the “enemy of the people.”

After the shooting, the publisher of The New York Times, A.G. Sulzberger, said in a statement that he told the president in a private meeting that his “language was not just divisive but increasingly dangerous.”

But Trump has kept up his attacks. At a political rally last week, he praised a Republican congressional candidate’s assault on a reporter last year.

“Anybody that can do a body-slam,” the president said, “that’s my kind of guy.”

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