Washington Police Hunt For Gunman Who Wounded 4 Near Elite Prep School

Police issued a bulletin seeking a man they identified as a "person of interest" in a shooting that left four people wounded near an elite prep school in the nation's capital on Friday as investigators searched door to door for the culprit.

Eyewitnesses told Reuters and local media outlets they heard multiple bursts of gunfire in the upscale Van Ness neighborhood of northwest Washington next to the Edmund Burke School just as classes were about to be dismissed for the day.

One man told television station WUSA-TV he heard rapid-fire shots lasting about a minute, then saw a woman running out of a building who appeared to have been grazed by gunfire, followed by other people who were apparently wounded.

The eyewitness said he saw other people on the street taking cover behind parked cars and pointing up to a balcony where they presumably believed the gunshots originated near the private college preparatory school.

Authorities said they had no motive for the shooting, which took place along a busy Connecticut Avenue corridor that is also home to several foreign embassies, the Howard University School of Law and a campus of the University of the District of Columbia.

Three people struck by gunfire were taken to area hospitals - a 54-year-old man and a woman in her mid-30s with severe wounds, and a 12-year-old girl wounded in the arm, police said.

A fourth victim, a woman in her mid-60s, was treated on the scene for a slight graze wound, according to Assistant Police Chief Stuart Emerman.

He said police fanned out across the neighborhood looking for possible perpetrators, and that several people seen fleeing the scene were briefly detained for questioning, though none was believed to have been involved.

At a briefing on Friday evening, Emerman said police were seeking a "person of interest" they named as 23-year-old Raymond Spencer, of suburban Fairfax, Virginia, identified by investigators through social media postings.

Police did not specify the nature of those postings. A person identifying himself as Raymond Spencer had posted a series of messages in the online platform 4Chan with video that appeared to show gunshots fired from the vantage point of an upper-floor window, with the misspelled label: "Shool shooting!"

Photographs of Spencer were posted online by the police.

"We'd like to speak to Mr. Spencer, figure out if he has any role in this or any connection to this, and hopefully that will lead us in the direction to identify what happened here and why," Emerman said.

Earlier, Emerman said members of the public were being warned to steer clear of the area as the investigation continued.

'SOMETHING BAD HAPPENING'

Deaven Rector, 22, a law student, told Reuters he heard three bursts of gunfire that seemed to emanate from the AVA Van Ness apartment building where he lives, and which was evacuated.

"Right now, the police have secured the area, and it's safe, but the fact that this type of chaos can be caused by a maniac on a regular Friday... The kids were about to get out of school," he said.

Jennifer DiGiacinto told Reuters she learned of the shooting from a text message sent by her son, a Burke School 11th grader.

"He said, 'There's something bad happening, I need you to turn on the news.' I said, 'Why, what's happening?' And he said, 'Gunfire, I'm under a desk, we're barricaded in.'"

Local news footage showed Connecticut Avenue blockaded by emergency vehicles. Dozens of police vehicles with flashing lights were parked outside the school building, as police in full tactical gear and some in camouflage assembled nearby.

Local NBC affiliate WRC-TV aired footage showing evacuees from a nearby building running down a sidewalk, some with their hands raised.

Lamenting the trauma of gun violence that has become commonplace in the United States, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser told reporters, "Unfortunately, I had to look in parents' eyes tonight who were terrified. And they were terrified thinking of what might happen to their children."