2 National Guard members remain in critical condition after ‘targeted shooting’ near White House
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Authorities are set to hold a press conference Thursday morning after two National Guard members from West Virginia remain in critical condition after a gunman opened fire on them in an apparent “targeted shooting” near the White House, officials said.
The gunfire broke out around 2:15 p.m. Wednesday, when the unidentified suspect rounded a corner, near the Farragut West Metro station in Washington, D.C., raised his arm with the weapon and opened fire, Metropolitan Police Department Executive Assistant Chief Jeffery Carroll said.
Other National Guard members quickly responded to the shooting and helped subdue the suspected shooter, Carroll said.
“They heard the gunfire and they actually were able to intervene and to hold down the suspect after he had been shot on the ground,” Carroll said of the responding Guard members.
Law enforcement officials, including FBI Director Kash Patel, are scheduled to hold a news conference at 9 a.m. ET on Thursday at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Washington. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro is expected to be present.
The White House was briefly put on lockdown on Wednesday but that the order was lifted at about 5 p.m. President Donald Trump and the first lady are in Florida, where they are spending Thanksgiving at his Mar-a-Lago club.
The suspected gunman has been identified by law enforcement as 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, multiple law enforcement sources familiar with the investigation told ABC News.
Lakanwal is believed to be from Afghanistan and came to the United States in 2021 under the Biden administration, the sources said. He applied for asylum in 2024 and was granted asylum in April 2025, under the Trump administration, according to three law enforcement sources.
Several sources told ABC News that the FBI is investigating the shooting as a potential act of international terrorism, suggesting authorities are trying to determine if it may have been inspired by an international terrorist organization.
The National Guard was deployed to the nation’s capital as part of Trump’s federal takeover of the city in August. According to the most recent update, there were 2,188 Guard personnel assigned to D.C.
On Tuesday, during the traditional turkey pardoning at the White House, Trump touted his administration’s takeover of D.C. streets. He said it was “one of our most unsafe places anywhere in the United States. It is now considered a totally safe city.”
“You could walk down any street in Washington and you’re going to be just fine. And I want to thank the National Guard. I want to thank you for the job you’ve done here is incredible,” Trump said at the event.
ABC News’ Ahmad Hemingway contributed to this report.
View of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park are seen in Tennessee. (Patrick Gorski/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Park rangers in the Smoky Mountains are searching for a missing 21-year-old man who was last seen in Nashville four days ago, according to the National Park Service.
Ryan Lakes was last seen in the Tennessee capital on Thursday, with park officials locating his vehicle on Saturday, the NPS said in a press release on Sunday.
Park officials are scanning the Big Creek area of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in their search for Lakes, officials said. According to the NPS website, the Big Creek area is a “dense forest” and a “secluded area on the northeast edge of the park near the North Carolina-Tennessee border.”
The area is also known for “numerous streams and waterfalls,” according to the NPS website.
Lakes is a white male with brown hair and hazel eyes, is approximately 5 feet, 5 inches tall and weighs 130 pounds, the NPS noted.
He was last seen wearing dark-colored gym shorts, a dark-colored T-shirt, brown tennis shoes and a black backpack, according to the NPS.
Park officials said “several organizations” are assisting the NPS with search efforts.
Officials asked that anyone who has seen Lakes or has any information on his whereabouts contact the NPS Tip Line at 888-653-0009 or submit a tip on their website.
The National Park Service did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
To learn more about how to stay safe when embarking on a multi-day hike excursion, click here.
Bryan Kohberger appears at the Ada County Courthouse for his sentencing hearing, July 23, 2025, in Boise, Idaho. (Kyle Green/Pool/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — As part of his studies in the fall of 2022, then-criminology Washington State University Ph.D. student Bryan Kohberger proposed researching criminals’ emotions and how they made decisions. In November, the scholar of crime would go on to stab four college students to death.
Buried in nearly 700 pages of evidence photos, the Idaho State Police released a trove of Kohberger’s homework assignments from his Pullman, Washington, apartment. The pictures were released in response to public records requests, including from ABC News.
They are among the thousands of pages of records now being released in the wake of Kohberger’s decision to plead guilty to killing Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen, Ethan Chapin and Xana Kernodle in the early morning hours of Nov. 13, 2022. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in July.
“Not all criminal actions reflect a rational, instrumental process,” Kohberger wrote for one of his classes. “Crimes of passion involve reactive violence, which manifests due to intense emotional arousal, confounding notions of an exclusively cold, criminal calculus.”
He said he wanted to understand “how emotions, both positively and negatively valanced, influence the decision-making involved in burglary before, during and after crime-commission.” He suggested conducting “in-person, semi-structured” jailhouse interviews.
Investigators pored over everything they found among Kohberger’s possessions in order to help piece together a portrait of their suspect. Kohberger’s writings indicated that he had not only steeped himself in studying crime — he had shown desire to get inside criminals’ heads, according to investigators.
“That, in and of itself, would not make him a criminal. There’s others out there that are deeply fascinated in studying people that would never probably even consider committing the crime,” said Ed Jacobson, who was the FBI’s Acting Supervisor for the Couer d’Alene and Lewiston offices during the Moscow investigation.
“Once we arrested him, the [Behavioral Analysis Unit] is out there. They are going through the phones. They’re going through every bit of information we’ve gathered on this guy,” Jacobson said. “We’re looking for evidence we can show in court. They’re looking at it as the broader spectrum. They’re trying to get into this guy’s thinking patterns. It goes to knowledge, and potentially motive. Doesn’t make him guilty — but a lot of other stuff did.”
Prosecutors had planned to use Kohberger’s homework against him at trial. They would have used some of his assignments to show he had intently “studied crime” — and knew exactly how to cover his tracks after committing murder. “He had that knowledge and skill,” lead prosecutor Bill Thompson said at the July 2 plea hearing.
The now-admitted killer also wrote at length about how “procedural injustice” in the American system “has produced many false confessions.”
“False guilty pleas manifest due to a lack of judicial oversight and plea deals that seem to compel defendants to enter them,” Kohberger wrote. “If defendants fail to accept a plea bargain, prosecutors will pursue the strictest charges.”
“Some people simply plead guilty to crimes they did not commit as to choose the lesser of two evils,” he said. Kohberger also pointed to “eyewitness misidentification” as an issue and noted a potential remedy: “increasing video surveillance in public places.”
In another paper, Kohberger described how “imprudent application of prosecutorial power” fostered mass incarceration. He wrote about a 2005 murder case involving a woman who was convicted of her mother’s murder, and who later won her release. Kohberger wrote how the prosecutor “behaved highly unethically” and the woman was “forced” to “accept the evidence against her.”
“If she failed to comply, this would leave [the accused woman] with no future, and in an attempt to salvage what was left of her life, she acquiesced,” Kohberger wrote. “Though one cannot ascertain [her] actual guilt, her case is reminiscent of the rushed process that precipitates false imprisonment.”
Another seven-page paper explored what Kohberger called a “gruesome” stabbing murder case. “Blood pooled around him and was spattered on the walls and television near his body,” Kohberger said, describing how the victim was found. He noted grisly details from the scene “would be a reminder of the seriousness” of the crime to jurors. Kohberger added that the alleged killer’s DNA evidence was found at the scene which belied his “initial account.”
In an essay quiz dated Oct. 19, 2022, Kohberger discussed whether the death penalty is a “valid public policy, especially in the context of history and morality.” He argued that in fact, capital punishment is not effective.
“There is no evidence of deterrent effects, and there remains an even better argument that, rather than preventing anarchy and disorder, the divisive policy may increase it in due time,” Kohberger wrote. In his papers on the death penalty, he cited some of the same court decisions his lawyers would later use in an unsuccessful attempt to take the death penalty off the table in his own case.
By the end of the fall 2022 semester, Kohberger’s status at the university was in jeopardy, according to police records.
Just 11 days before he would carry out the quadruple killing, Kohberger was sent a letter from his graduate program how to adjust his behavior — or face further discipline.
The “improvement plan,” dated Nov. 2, 2022 and issued by WSU Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, directed Kohberger to establish goals and meet with a supervisor weekly. Among the steps he was directed to take was to “make sure weekly goals are progressively harder to ensure progress throughout the rest of the semester.”
(LOS ANGELES) — A woman reportedly known as the “Ketamine Queen” has pleaded guilty to providing the dose of ketamine that led to Matthew Perry’s death in October 2023, becoming the fifth and final person to be convicted in connection with the “Friends” actor’s fatal overdose.
Jasveen Sangha, 42, pleaded guilty Wednesday in Los Angeles federal court to one count of maintaining a drug-involved premises, three counts of distribution of ketamine, and one count of distribution of ketamine resulting in death or serious bodily injury, the Department of Justice said.
Sangha had been scheduled to go on trial in late September. The dual U.S-U.K. citizen has been in custody since her arrest in August 2024, nearly a year after Perry’s death.
Her attorney said Sangha has “accepted responsibility.”
“She feels horrible. She’s felt horrible from Day 1,” her attorney, Mark Geragos, told reporters outside the courthouse on Wednesday. “This has been a horrendous experience.”
Her sentencing hearing is scheduled for Dec. 10. She faces 45 years in prison. Geragos said he feel there’s “a lot of mitigation in this case” regarding the sentencing, but didn’t go into specific detail on what those factors would be.
“I think there’s a lot of things that we will present that will give a clear picture as to what actually happened and levels of responsibility,” he said.
Perry died from a ketamine overdose on Oct. 28, 2023, at the age of 54. The actor was discovered unresponsive in a jacuzzi at his Los Angeles home, police said. An autopsy report revealed he died from the acute effects of ketamine.
In addition to Sangha, four other people were charged and pleaded guilty in connection with Perry’s death — Kenneth Iwamasa, Perry’s live-in personal assistant; two doctors, Salvador Plasencia and Mark Chavez; and Erik Fleming.
Prosecutors said Sangha worked with Fleming to distribute ketamine to Perry, and that in October 2023, they sold the actor 51 vials of ketamine, which were provided to Iwamasa, the DOJ said.
“Leading up to Perry’s death, Iwamasa repeatedly injected Perry with the ketamine that Sangha supplied to Fleming,” the DOJ said in a press release last month. “Specifically, on October 28, 2023, Iwamasa injected Perry with at least three shots of Sangha’s ketamine, which caused Perry’s death.”
Iwamasa, who admitted in court documents to administering the ketamine on the day that Perry died, pleaded guilty in August 2024 to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine causing death, the DOJ said. He is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 19.
Fleming admitted in court documents that he distributed the ketamine that killed Perry, prosecutors said. Like Iwamasa, he pleaded guilty in August 2024 to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine and one count of distribution of ketamine resulting in death and will be sentenced on Nov. 12.
Plasencia pleaded guilty in July to four counts of distribution of ketamine. Plasencia distributed ketamine to Iwamasa in order to inject the actor, however, he did not supply the doses that killed Perry, prosecutors said. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Dec. 3.
Chavez pleaded guilty in October 2024 to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine. He admitted he sold Plasencia ketamine to then give to Perry. He is set to be sentenced on Dec. 17.
In her plea agreement, Sangha also admitted to selling ketamine in connection with another overdose death, prosecutors said. Victim Cody McLaury died hours after Sangha sold him four vials of ketamine in August 2019, according to the DOJ.
She additionally admitted to using her North Hollywood residence to “store, package, and distribute narcotics, including ketamine and methamphetamine, since at least June 2019,” the DOJ said. Authorities found 79 vials of liquid ketamine, among other drugs and drug trafficking items such as a money-counting machine, in her residence during a search in March 2023, the DOJ said.
