The chase apparently stretched across downtown Washington: it started at the security barriers outside one icon, and ended at the barriers outside another.
It began near the White House, at 15th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW. Oregon residents B.J. and Susan Campbell saw a black Infiniti driven by a woman heading west on Pennsylvania, into a security checkpoint. The driver went about 20 yards, B.J. Campbell said, before rapidly turning the car around at the concrete security barriers.
“The Secret Service guy was just having a cow,” B.J. Campbell said. “Yelling at her and banging on the car.” The Secret Service officers pulled a black metal gate into her path and she slowed to try to go around it. Then the agent moved the gate in front of her again.
At that point “she just gunned it,” B.J. Campbell said. “She ran the barricade down and the guy; knocked him up onto her hood. He rolled off into the street, and she tore off down Pennsylvania Avenue.” The whole encounter lasted about 20 seconds, he said.
Another witness said the man was an off-duty officer in plain clothes holding a lunch cooler in his hand.
A few moments later and about 1.7 miles away, eyewitnesses reported seeing a black car speeding through Capitol Hill streets, pursued by several police vehicles.
Video taken by the channel Alhurra showed officers pointing guns at a black coupe at the foot of Capitol Hill. The car then sped away from the officers, circled around two different traffic circles, and then spent east on Constitution Avenue toward the top of Capitol Hill.
House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) took to Twitter to thank the police. “We all owe the Capitol Police a debt of gratitude for their work every day; no finer examples of professionalism & bravery,” Boehner wrote.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...459e0e-2c5a-11e3-8ade-a1f23cda135e_story.html
