One of two US national guard soldiers shot in a targeted attack near the White House this week has died, while the second is fighting for his life, Donald Trump has announced.
As part of his Thanksgiving call to US troops late on Thursday, the US president said he had been informed that Sarah Beckstrom, 20, had succumbed to her wounds.
“Sarah Beckstrom of West Virginia, one of the guardsmen that we’re talking about, highly respected, young, magnificent person … She’s just passed away. She’s no longer with us,” Trump said in his first live remarks since the shooting on Wednesday.
Trump added that the second guard member, Staff Sgt Andrew Wolfe, 24, was “fighting for his life”.
The alleged assailant, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, will now face upgraded charges as a result of Beckstrom’s death, said Jeanne Pirro, US attorney for the District of Columbia.
Lakanwal, 29, would “now be charged with murder in the first-degree”, she said.
In an interview with Fox News, Pirro anticipated that as the investigation progressed, authorities would find out “what actually happened in terms of this individual even being in this country and being in a position to ambush and shoot down an innocent young woman who was doing her duty”.
A day earlier, the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, said she would urge prosecutors to seek the death penalty against Lakanwal, an Afghan national who had worked for CIA-backed anti-terrorism units and was admitted to the US in 2021 under a post-Afghan war resettlement program.
“I will tell you right now, I will tell you early, we will do everything in our power to seek the death penalty against that monster who should not have been in our country,” Bondi said.
Beckstrom’s father had told the New York Times in a phone call earlier in the day that his daughter was unlikely to recover. “I’m holding her hand right now,” Gary Beckstrom said. “She has a mortal wound. It’s not going to be a recovery.”
Beckstrom and Wolfe belonged to the West Virginia national guard, which deployed hundreds of troops to Washington as part of Trump’s controversial crime-fighting mission in the capital.
Beckstrom, from Webster Springs, West Virginia, entered service in June 2023. West Virginia’s governor, Patrick Morrisey, said in a social media post that Beckstrom had “served with courage, extraordinary resolve and an unwavering sense of duty to her state and to her nation”.
Investigators are looking into motives on the part of the suspect, who was shot at the scene by a third guard member and is being treated in hospital. His wounds are not believed to be life-threatening.
Lakanwal, who Trump has called a “savage monster”, was part of a CIA-backed unit in Afghanistan before he came to the US in 2021 under a resettlement programme launched after the chaotic US withdrawal.
Officials have confirmed Lakanwal arrived under a programme that gave some Afghans who had worked for the US government entry visas. He was granted asylum in April this year, under the Trump administration, Reuters reported.
A resident of eastern Afghanistan who identified himself as Lakanwal’s cousin told the Associated Press that he was originally from the province of Khost. The cousin, who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, said Lakanwal had worked in a special Afghan army unit.
A former official from the unit, who also spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation, said Lakanwal was a team leader and his brother was a platoon leader.
The cousin said Lakanwal started out working as a security guard for the unit in 2012, and was later promoted to become a team leader and a GPS specialist.
The suspect’s former landlord, Kristina Widman, said he had been living in Washington state with his wife and five children.
Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney for Washington DC, said at a news conference on Thursday that Lakanwal drove across the country to launch an “ambush-style” attack with a .357 Smith & Wesson revolver. The suspect shot one guard member twice before turning to fire at the second, she said.
The FBI director, Kash Patel, told the news conference the agency was investigating the shooting as an act of terrorism. Law enforcement agencies had executed search warrants at the suspect’s home in Washington and in San Diego, California.
The US has perennially high numbers of mass shootings, which have prompted many to call for more substantial gun control. A study released earlier this year found that one in 15 Americans has witnessed a mass shooting.
Investigators believe Lakanwal acted alone. He is one of roughly 76,000 Afghans brought to the US through the resettlement programme, many of whom worked alongside US troops and diplomats as interpreters and translators.
Supporters have said candidates were extensively vetted. But the initiative has drawn intense criticism from Republicans over what they have argued are gaps in the vetting process and the speed of admissions.
Shortly after the national guard shooting, Trump was quick to cast the blame on the Biden administration, accusing it of failing to properly vet migrants from Afghanistan. And he later said he would “permanently pause migration from all third world countries”, without specifying how.
After the shooting, Trump said he would send 500 more national guard troops to Washington DC. It is not clear where the additional troops would come from.
A federal judge last week ordered an end to the guard deployment but also put her order on hold for 21 days to allow the Trump administration time to either remove the troops or appeal.
The Associated Press contributed to this report
