US Politics
National Guard shooting suspect to face first-degree murder charge, Jeanine Pirro says
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The man accused of gunning down two National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., will face a charge of first-degree murder following the death of West Virginia service member Sarah Beckstrom.
The upgraded charge against Rahmanullah Lakanwal was first announced by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro on Fox & Friends Friday morning.
“There are certainly many more charges to come,” she said.
Lakanwal was wounded when National Guardsmen returned fire and is being treated in a D.C.-area hospital.
Pirro had announced a day earlier that the Department of Justice would charge Lakanwal with assault with intent to kill while armed and three counts of possession of a firearm during a crime of violence.
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“We are hoping that the more information we can get and the more investigations going on … the more we will find out about what actually happened,” Pirro said Friday.
Lakanwal, a 29-year-old Afghan national, was taken into custody shortly after two National Guard members were shot roughly two blocks from the White House on Wednesday afternoon.
President Donald Trump announced the death of 20-year-old Beckstrom Thursday night. A second guardsman, 24-year-old Andrew Wolfe, remains in critical condition.
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Federal law enforcement officials have accused Lakanwal of shooting the service members in an “ambush” that is being investigated as an act of terrorism.
“It was a crime against our entire nation,” Trump said in remarks Wednesday night. “It was a crime against humanity.”
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Lakanwal is believed to have arrived in the United States in 2021 during Joe Biden’s administration and the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. He applied for asylum in 2024 and was granted asylum in April 2025 under the Trump administration.
He had previously worked with the U.S. government, including the CIA, as a member of a partner force in Kandahar, according to CIA Director John Ratcliffe.
Trump has used the shooting to escalate his attacks on immigration and the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, casting the violence in D.C. as evidence of “the single greatest national security threat facing our nation.”
The administration will “reexamine every single alien from Afghanistan who has entered our country under Biden and we must take all necessary measures to ensure the removal of any alien from any country who does not belong here or add benefit to our country,” the president said.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services also announced an immediate and indefinite halt to the “processing of all immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals” pending a review of security and vetting protocols.
Lakanwa was believed to have been living in Bellingham, Washington with his wife and five children and working as a delivery driver, according to officials.
Shots were fired in Washington around 2:15 p.m. Wednesday near the Farragut West Metro Station, a short distance from Lafayette Square near the White House.
The two wounded soldiers were part of a “high-visibility patrol” when they encountered the suspect, who rounded a corner, raised his arm and fired at them with a .357 revolver, according to Jeffery Carroll, executive assistant chief of D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department.
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has described the shooting as a “targeted” attack. Law enforcement officials have not publicly identified a motive for the attack.
