WASHINGTON — A knife-wielding man who was shot by a contracted security guard at D.C.’s Union Station on Friday has died.
On Sunday, police released the identity of the man, William Thomas Wilson Jr., 57, of Southeast D.C.
The shooting occurred at the McDonald’s in Union Station. A security guard under contract by the nearby U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission saw Wilson stab a woman in the building and chased the him to the restaurant, says Metropolitan Police Department Spokeswoman Gwendolyn Crump.
The Wilson, who was armed with a knife, accosted the security guard, which led the guard to shoot the him in the stomach.
The female victim was expected to pull through.
The stabbing was believed to be the product of a domestic dispute, Crump said. According to NBC4, the man and woman were arguing in the Kaiser Permanente Capitol Hill Medical Center in the Security and Exchange Commission building, which is near Union Station, when the man stabbed her.
Crump says an investigation is underway.
Dave from Lexington, Maryland, who didn’t want to reveal his last name, was sitting at the McDonald’s waiting for family to arrive on a train from Chicago when he heard the shot.
He said people ran for a back door at Union Station but couldn’t open it, so he and several others locked themselves in a closet.
“Everybody in there was pretty panicky, they were saying ‘don’t talk, stop, shut up, we don’t want anyone to hear that we’re in here’” he said.
The incident was happening during the lunch rush on a Friday, when both travelers and area workers are moving in throngs through the station.
The station is bigger than the nearby U.S. Capitol and serves as the southern terminus for passenger rail traffic in the northeast. It includes dozens of retails shops and restaurants, which typically draw thousands of midday diners. Some 90,000 people pass through Union Station each day, according to Amtrak.
Dave said the people in the closet put their feet up to the door, to prevent someone from barging into the room. He could hear people outside pounding on doors as they waited inside the closet. He said they emerged minutes later when the all clear was given.
Chrissie Seredni, of Richmond, Virginia, was in Union Station having lunch with her boss when she heard the shot.
“The first thing she said was ‘oh God, oh God, not now,’” she said.
Seredni said she ran with co-workers from the building and police moved in.
Seredni said she felt from the start that this wasn’t an attack related to 9/11 and quickly her feelings were backed up by police, who classified it as a domestic incident.
D.C. police Commander Jeff Brown says there was no apparent connection between the shooting and the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. “Obviously, with this being 9/11, fears were heightened and escalated,” he said.
