A US park police officer was seriously wounded Monday evening in a shooting in Washington DC in what the park police chief called an ambush.
Park police chief Scott Brecht said in a press briefing that the unidentified officer was “ambushed” by two gunmen who fired at the officer as he drove by in an unmarked vehicle. The officer was working on a park police investigation when he was shot. The chief declined to give specifics of the investigation.
“We have jurisdiction in all of Washington DC,” the chief said.
The veteran officer was airlifted by US park police helicopter to an area hospital, said Vito Maggiolo, public information officer for the the DC fire and emergency medical service department. He said the call came in about 7.30pm.
The officer was shot in the shoulder and is in serious but stable condition, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the matter.
Authorities were searching for two suspects, Brecht said.
The US park police confirmed in an email that the officer was in “non-life-threatening condition”.
The shooting took place in Washington DC’s south-east quadrant, close to the border with Maryland.
Washington DC’s interim police chief, Jeffery Carroll, said the officer was targeted. “There’s no reason that anybody, a police officer or not a police officer, should be shot just for being out here driving through the neighborhood,” he said. “We believe potentially they did know he was a police officer, but that’ll all be part of the ongoing investigation as relates to the actual shooting incident.”
Federal officials said they were assisting in the investigation.
In a post on X, the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, said she had spoken to Carroll and the Washington DC mayor, Muriel Bowser, and had been “briefed on the shooting”.
The FBI director, Kash Patel, said in his own X post that he was praying for the wounded park police officer. He added: “The FBI is actively supporting the investigation alongside our law enforcement partners and will bring those responsible to justice.”