WASHINGTON (AP) — President Trump said Thursday that one of the two West Virginia National Guard members shot by an Afghan national near the White House had died, calling the shooter who had worked with the CIA in his native country a “savage monster.”
As part of his Thanksgiving call to U.S. troops, Trump said he had just learned that Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, 20, had died, while Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, was “fighting for his life.”
“She’s just passed away,” Trump said. “She’s no longer with us. She’s looking down at us right now. Her parents are with her.”
The president called Beckstrom an “incredible person, outstanding in every single way.”
Trump used the announcement to say the shooting was a “terrorist attack” as he criticized the Biden administration for enabling Afghans who worked with U.S. forces during the Afghanistan War to enter the U.S. The president has deployed National Guard members in part to assist in his administration’s mass deportation efforts.
The suspect charged with the shooting is 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who entered the U.S. in 2021 and has been living in Bellingham, Wash. He had worked in a special CIA-backed Afghan Army unit before emigrating from Afghanistan, according to two sources who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the situation, and #AfghanEvac, a group that helps resettle Afghans who assisted the U.S. during the two-decade war.
The suspect in the shooting of two National Guard members in Washington, D.C., has been identified as 29-year-old Afghan citizen Rahmanullah Lakanwal. (Getty)
Trump suggested that the accused shooter was mentally unstable after the war and his departure from Afghanistan.
“He went cuckoo. I mean, he went nuts,” the president said. “It happens too often with these people.”
Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, said “it’s too soon” to provide a motive for Wednesday afternoon’s brazen act of violence, which occurred just blocks from the White House. The presence of troops in the nation’s capital and other cities around the country has become a political flashpoint.
Pirro said the suspect launched an “ambush-style” attack with a .357 Smith & Wesson revolver.
Lakanwal had been facing charges of assault with intent to kill while armed and possession of a firearm during a crime of violence, but Pirro previously said those charges would be upgraded if either of the victims died.
“We are praying that they survive and that the highest charge will not have to be murder in the first degree,” she said earlier on Thursday. “But make no mistake, if they do not, that will certainly be the charge.”
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