A woman shot dead after leading police on a car chase through Washington DC was driving with a one-year-old child.
Police said the woman attempted to penetrate the security barriers at the White House and the Capitol before she was shot to death. The child survived.
“I’m pretty confident this was not an accident,” said Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier. Authorities would not say whether the woman had been armed.
Tourists, congressional staff and even some senators watched as police vehicles chased the black car down Constitution Avenue outside the Capitol. House and Senate lawmakers, inside debating how to end a government shutdown, briefly shuttered their chambers as Capitol Police shut down the building.
The woman’s car at one point had been surrounded by police cars and she managed to escape, careening around a traffic circle and past the north side of the Capitol.
Video shot by a TV cameraman showed police pointing firearms at her car before she rammed a Secret Service vehicle and continued driving.
Ms Lanier said police shot and killed her a block north-east of the historic building.
One Secret Service member and a 23-year veteran of the Capitol Police were injured. Officials said they are in good condition and expected to recover.
“This appears to be an isolated, singular matter, with, at this point, no nexus to terrorism,” said Capitol Police Chief Kim Dine.
The pursuit began when the car sped on to a driveway leading to the White House, over a set of lowered barricades. When the driver could not get through a second barrier, she spun the car in the opposite direction, flipping a Secret Service officer over her car as she sped away, said BJ Campbell, a tourist from Portland, Oregon.
“The car was trying to get away. But it was going over the median and over the curb,” said Matthew Coursen, who was watching from a cab window when the Infiniti sped by him. “The car got boxed in and that’s when I saw an officer of some kind draw his weapon and fire shots into the car.”
Police shot and killed the driver just outside the Hart Senate Office Building, where many senators have their offices. Mr Dine said an officer took the child from the car to a hospital. She is in good condition under protective custody, officials said.