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 (AP) - Police investigated reports of gunfire in a
House office building on Friday and briefly sealed off the Capitol
as a precaution.

      Capitol police were investigating "the sound of gunfire in the
garage level of the Rayburn House Office Building," said an
announcement on the internal Capitol voice alarm system.

      The Senate was in session at the time, but the House was not as
most lawmakers had left for the Memorial Day recess. Four
ambulances were on standby outside Rayburn as police methodically
searched the office building. 

Police lined the street between the
Capitol and the Rayburn building, rifles prominently displayed.

      Dozens of police officers, many of them armed with assault
rifles, milled around ouside the entrance to the garage.

      There was no confirmation of gunfire. The FBI and D.C. Fire
Department said there have been no injuries reported.

      Capitol police scheduled a noon EDT briefing.

      Rep. Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., conducting a House Intelligence
Committee hearing, interrupted a witness to request those attending
the meeting to remain in the room and said the doors must be
closed.

      "It's a little unsettling to get a Blackberry message put in
front of you that says there's gunfire in the building," he said.

      The Rayburn House Office Building was completed in early 1965
and is the third of three office buildings constructed for the U.S.
House of Representatives. It sits southwest of the Capitol. The
building has four stories above ground, two basements and three
levels of underground garage space.

      Steven Broderick, press spokesperson for Rep. William Delahunt,
D-Mass., was in his car in the Rayburn garage Friday morning
getting ready to drive his boss to the airport, when he was ordered
by a Capitol Police officer to park the car and put his hands on
the steering wheel. 

The officer then told him to run toward an exit
where other officers where gathered.

      "He just told me to run and don't look back," Broderick said.

      The U.S. Capitol Police Department's Containment & Emergency
Response Team maintains an indoor shooting range in the basement of
the Rayburn building, according to the department's Web site.

      Within minutes of the reports, Rayburn halls were virtually
empty and police were not allowing anyone to leave or take
elevators or stairs to the garage.

Three of Minnesota's House members have offices in the Rayburn building -- Reps. Martin Sabo, James Oberstar, and Collin Peterson.  Neither Sabo nor Oberstar were in their offices at the time. It's unclear whether Peterson was.  

      The incident occurred at the end of a week of unusually
tumultuous series of events that ironically enough, began in the
same building. FBI agents armed with a search warrant seized
documents and computer material from the first office of Rep.
William Jefferson, D-La., in a weekend raid. Jefferson is at the
center of a federal bribery investigation.

      At the Capitol, police quickly closed all doors, stopping people
from either entering the building. Tourists were herded into a
first-floor chamber in the middle of the building. Other corridors
on the House side of the building, where lawmakers had already left
for the recess, were deserted.

      Jeff Connor, a spokesman for Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, R-Mo., said
Capitol Hill police notified the office that gunfire was heard in
the Rayburn building garage.

      "They specifically said there was the sound of gunfire on one
of the garage levels of the Rayburn House office building and asked
staff to remain in their offices," Connor said.

      Incidents of violence inside the Capitol and its office
buildings are rare.

      On July 24, 1998, a man with a history of mental illness shot
and killed Capitol Police officer Jacob J. Chestnut at a
first-floor Capitol entrance. He then charged into an adjacent
suite of offices occupied by Tom DeLay, then the House Republican
whip, and exchanged fire with officer John Gibson, who also was
killed. The gunman was wounded and captured.

      In 1983, a late-night bomb, possibly set by someone protesting
U.S. military action in Grenada and Lebanon, exploded just outside
the Senate chamber. No one was injured.

Gallery

Politics and Government News

Police investigated reports of gunfire in a
House office building on Friday and briefly sealed off the Capitol
as a precaution. The House was not in session, and most members were not in the building.


Police investigating reports of gunfire in Capitol office building

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