The U.S. Secret Service fatally shot a 21-year-old man who opened fire on a White House security checkpoint Saturday evening, striking and wounding an innocent bystander in the exchange, authorities said.
The District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department identified the suspect as Nasire Best, of Dundalk, Maryland. Best began shooting toward a White House checkpoint, and Secret Service officers returned fire, police said. Best was later pronounced dead at a hospital.
No Secret Service officers were injured, agency Director Sean Curran said in a statement posted on social media. “Our thoughts are also with the innocent bystander who was wounded during this incident,” Curran said. “The Secret Service is hopeful he will make a full recovery.”
The bystander, who has not been identified, suffered a gunshot wound that the Secret Service described as not life-threatening but remained in serious but stable condition Sunday. It was not immediately clear how the bystander was shot.
President Donald Trump was inside the White House at the time of the shooting. Later, on his Truth Social platform, Trump said Best had a “possible obsession with our Country’s most cherished structure” and used the incident to promote a ballroom he is seeking to build on the site of the White House’s former East Wing. Trump is asking Congress for $1 billion for security additions to the White House campus, including the ballroom, which he said the shooting “goes to show how important it is, for all future Presidents, to get, what will be, the most safe and secure space of its kind ever built in Washington, D.C.”
Saturday’s shooting was the third incident near the president in the past month. In April, a man armed with guns and knives breached the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, and earlier this month, Secret Service officers shot and wounded a man who fired at them near the Washington Monument.
Best had a previous encounter with law enforcement near the White House. According to District of Columbia court records, he was arrested last July after attempting to enter White House grounds near a different checkpoint. He failed to heed officers’ commands to stop, claimed to be Jesus Christ, and said he wanted to be arrested.
Best was a track and field athlete at Dundalk High School, from which he graduated in 2023. A woman who identified herself as Best’s mother told The Washington Post that she learned of the shooting on social media and was in disbelief. “He was never violent, regardless of what people are posting,” she said.