Miriam Carey of Stamford, Connecticut was pronounced dead Thursday afternoon after local police fired multiple shots into her black sedan as she tried to flee through the streets of the nation’s capital. Carey, a 34-year-old African American woman, traveled with a one-year-old child that was taken from the scene unharmed and placed in protective custody.
Her identity was first reported by NBC News. Investigators told various media outlets the car was registered to Carey and there is no reason to believe she was not behind the wheel. Friends described Carey as a caring mother who may have endured a head injury.
Authorities initially said she suffered from a "mental illness" but Carey's mother, Idella, later came forward to say Miriam suffered from a common form of depression that impacts women who recently gave birth.
"She had post-partum depression after having the baby [in August]," Idella Carey told ABC. "A few months later, she got sick. She was depressed...She was hospitalized."
Police officials said Thursday’s crime scene was the result of an “isolated incident” and not a terrorist attack.
What prompted the incident at approximately 2:00 p.m. EST has not been made public, but witnesses told reporters that Carey appeared to have been pulled over near the Capitol Building when she tried to escape.
“The sedan slammed in reverse, backed up, and smashed into one of the cruisers and did a 180, and took off around the south side of the Capitol,” Frank Swing, a government employee on furlough who witnessed Thursday’s events, told Reuters.
“It was like boom, boom, boom, something like that,” said Peter Plocki, an employee at the Department of Transportation on leave because of the government shutdown.
The car was quickly blocked in again, jammed between a number of patrol cars a security barrier installed after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Then came the gunshots.
Police and the FBI quickly sealed off and searched a house in Stamford believed to be the woman's home, officials said.
An investigation is under way into the incident.
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