The woman at the center of the car chase and police shooting that locked down Capitol Hill for a short time on Thursday reportedly had post-partum depression.
Miriam Carey, 34, a dental hygienist from Stamford, Conn., was stopped at a White House barricade before leading police on a chase in her black Infiniti. Gunshots were fired by law enforcement on the car at two separate locations, the second resulting in Carey’s death. An 18-month-old girl was pulled from the car unharmed.
From ABC News:
Authorities described Carey has having a “mental illness.”
“She had post-partum depression after having the baby” last August, said the woman’s mother, Idella Carey.
She added, “A few months later, she got sick. She was depressed. … She was hospitalized.”
…Idella Carey said her daughter had “no history of violence” and she did not know why she was in Washington, D.C. She said she believed Carey was taking the little girl to a doctor’s appointment today in Connecticut.
Dr. Steven Oken, her boss of eight years, described Carey as a “non-political person” who was “always happy.”
And more from NBC News:
The woman who led authorities on a chase from the White House to the Capitol before she was killed by police may have thought that President Barack Obama was stalking her, law enforcement sources told NBC News.
The sources said that the woman, Miriam Carey, had a history of mental health problems.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) told CNN he was walking near the Capitol when he saw on Constitution Avenue “a bunch of police cars racing down the street, sirens blaring, and then I stopped to look at that. Then I heard the gunshots, four or five shots, ring out from that area over there.”
“There’s a lot of tension in the air right now, a lot of unhinged folks out there. So you don’t know what’s going on. You don’t know if that’s a decoy, if something else is going on. But the police officers reacted I think very effectively. They said get down, get down, Senator Wicker and I kind of ducked behind one of the SUVs over there, and we were escorted back into the Capitol,” Sanders said.
Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) said last night that there are still many questions to be answered, but “first and foremost, it is a terrible tragedy.”
“Two officers injured and you have a death as well by the suspect — or the death of the suspect. So it is a terrible tragedy. The way the Capitol Police responded was comprehensive, very effective and I think it was in keeping with securing not only members of Congress but anyone who is near or on Capitol grounds,” Casey said.”
“So I think the Capitol Police did a great job on a difficult circumstance and this is in the aftermath of the shooting at the naval yard. So they wanted to make sure everyone was safe, a lot of details yet to be learned though.”
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