Secret Service Shoots Armed Man Near White House

The suspect was transported to a hospital and his condition is currently unknown.

Secret Service police stand guard outside the White House on Jan. 28, 2023. Tasos Katopodis/Reuters

The U.S. Secret Service shot an adult male near the White House following an “armed confrontation” with law enforcement shortly after midnight on March 9, the agency said.

The man was shot near the intersection of 17th Street and F Street NW, according to a statement posted to the social media platform X by Secret Service Chief of Communications Anthony Guglielmi.

The day prior, local police reported a “suicidal individual” possibly traveling to Washington from Indiana, the agency said. After Secret Service agents found the individual’s vehicle within a block of the White House, they saw a person on foot matching the description.

“As officers approached, the individual brandished a firearm, and an armed confrontation ensued, during which shots were fired by our personnel,” the agency said.

Authorities transported the suspect to a hospital, and his condition is currently unknown. No injuries were reported among Secret Service personnel and the incident remains under investigation, the agency added.

President Donald Trump was not inside the White House during the incident, as he is at his Florida residence for the weekend. 

Washington’s Metropolitan Police said its internal affairs division investigators were probing the incident but did not offer further comment.

This is not the first instance of an armed man being shot by security officers on or near the White House grounds.

In 2016, a Pennsylvania man was shot by a Secret Service guard after brandishing a firearm near the White House. He survived and was sentenced to eight months of house arrest.

Another incident in 2023 involved a 20-year-old Indian citizen named Sai Varshith Kandula who had tried to barrel through the White House’s protective barriers with a rented truck. The man pleaded guilty to damaging federal property in May 2023 and said he was trying to overthrow the U.S. government and had been “fueled by the ideology of Nazi Germany.”

Trump also narrowly survived an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, last July when a gunman opened fire on him, grazing his ear. A lack of proper diligence and communication gaps led to the near-miss, a Secret Service review found.

Then in September 2024, a man was arrested after allegedly brandishing and aiming a SKS-style rifle near the president inside shrubbery at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach. Ryan Routh, 59, is accused of attempting to assassinate Trump, then a major presidential candidate.

Routh’s case is ongoing, and on Friday, his defense attorneys said they would like to order a test firing of the gun he was allegedly holding on the day of the incident.

The test, which the Justice Department objected to as “utterly unprecedented,” would determine whether the gun was operable and could fire at the range Routh was allegedly standing at from the president.

Reuters contributed to this report.