A night out on one of Washington’s busiest bar strips ended in gunfire late Sunday. Police say a fight broke out at about 11:10 p.m. on the sidewalk in the 400 block of 8th Street SE — Barracks Row — and that seven or eight National Guard members in a nearby van got out to intervene.
According to the Metropolitan Police Department, a man involved in the fight pulled a gun, ignored commands to drop it, pointed it at the Guard members and fired. Three Guard members fired back. One Guard member was hit in the leg, and the suspect was hit in the abdomen and arrested at the scene.
Both wounded men were taken to hospital with injuries described as non-life-threatening, and both are expected to survive. Interim Police Chief Jeffery Carroll briefed reporters at the scene early Monday, saying investigators do not yet know how the fight started, though it apparently involved people from a nearby establishment.
The 400 block of Barracks Row has drawn a heavy weekend-night police presence after repeated late-night disturbances, and residents raised the issue at a community meeting earlier this month. Sunday’s shooting — with Guard members, deployed in the capital, caught in the middle of a street fight — is likely to sharpen that local debate.
