Man armed with shotgun ran toward Capitol, apprehended by police
The US Capitol in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2026. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — An 18-year-old man was apprehended after running toward the U.S. Capitol with a loaded shotgun, according to Capitol police.
Just after noon on Tuesday, the man parked a white Mercedes SUV, got out of the car and started running toward the Washington, D.C. building, Capitol Police Chief Michael Sullivan said at a news conference.
As he approached the building, officers with the Capitol police saw him and ordered him to drop the weapon, the chief said.
“He immediately complied,” Sullivan said, noting that the man put down the gun, got on the ground and was then taken into custody.
The man had additional rounds with him, as well as a tactical vest and tactical gloves, according to Sullivan. A Kevlar helmet and gas mask were found in his car, he added.
“Who knows what could’ve happened” if the officers were not standing guard, Sullivan said.
Officers cleared the area, which has since reopened, according to police.
“There does not appear to be any other suspects or ongoing threat,” authorities said.
Both chambers of Congress are out of session this week.
A motive is not clear, Sullivan noted.
The man, who does not live in the area, was not known to Capitol police, he said.
A sign at the El Paso International Airport (ELP) on December 25, 2025 in El Paso, Texas. (Kirby Lee/Getty Images)
(EL PASO, Texas) — The Federal Aviation Administration issued temporary flight restrictions over El Paso, Texas, and Santa Teresa, New Mexico, prohibiting all flight operations there for the next 10 days for “special security reasons,” according to a notice.
The notice said no flights could operate beginning early Wednesday within a 10 nautical mile radius of El Paso Airport, including from the ground up to 17,999 feet. The restrictions will remain in effect until Feb. 21, the notice said. This excludes the Mexican airspace.
El Paso Airport authorities told ABC News in a statement, “The FAA, on short notice, issued a temporary flight restriction halting all flights to and from El Paso and our neighboring community, Santa Teresa, NM. The restriction prohibits all aircraft operations (including commercial, cargo and general aviation) and is effective from February 10 at 11:30 PM (MST) to February 20 at 11:30PM (MST). Airport staff has reached out to the FAA, and we are pending additional guidance.”
The airport says airlines have been advised of the restrictions, and travelers are encouraged to check with their airlines on the latest flight information.
The airspace has been defined as “national defense airspace,” according to the FAA. Pilots who violate these restrictions could be intercepted or detained for questioning by law enforcement.
Failure to comply with these restrictions could result in the FAA imposing a civil penalty or revoking the pilot’s license. The federal government can also pursue criminal charges or even use “deadly force” against an aircraft if it poses an imminent security threat, according to the notice.
ABC News has reached out to the FAA for additional information behind these restrictions as well as to airlines about disruptions to their operations.
El Paso is home to one of the largest cargo facilities near the border, so these restrictions could have a significant impact on shipments as well. ABC News has also contacted air cargo carriers for any information.
Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, seen inside a car rental facility. (New Hampshire attorney general)
(NEW YORK) — The suspect in last weekend’s mass shooting at Brown University that left two students dead and nine others wounded was found dead Thursday — and authorities said he is the same man who gunned down an MIT professor two days after the Rhode Island campus shooting.
During a news conference Thursday, authorities identified the suspect as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, a 48-year-old former Brown graduate student, who attended the school some 25 years ago.
Officials said he took his own life. His body was discovered in a New Hampshire storage unit following an intense, multi-state manhunt that had stretched on for days.
“Tonight our Providence neighbors can finally breathe a little easier,” Mayor Brett Smiley told reporters at at news conference Thursday night.
Officials said there is no evidence Valente was working with anyone else, describing in detail his movements leading up to and after the shooting, including steps he took to conceal himself from authorities.
Officials have not yet provided a motive for the back-to-back shootings that left residents of parts of New England on edge for days.
Former Ph.D student who spent time in engineering building
Brown University President Christina Paxson said Neves Valente had enrolled as a Ph.D student in Brown’s physics program in 2000 and attended for less than a year, before going on a leave of absence and then withdrawing. She said it was believed, as a physics student, he spent considerable time in the Barus & Holley engineering building that was targeted in the shooting on Saturday.
Valente, who entered the U.S. in 2000 on a student visa, obtained lawful permanency in April 2017, authorities said.
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said the suspect was granted a visa through the diversity lottery program in 2017 and said that DHS would be pausing the program immediately “to ensure no more Americans are harmed,” according to a statement posted on X early Friday morning.
“This heinous individual should never have been allowed in our country. In 2017,” said Noem.
He had no current affiliation with the school, according to officials.
How 2 puzzling crimes were linked
Authorities in Massachusetts confirmed Valente is also the suspected gunman in the death of MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro in Brookline, who was fatally shot on Monday night in the foyer of his building in Brookline, Massachusetts.
Both men were natives of Portugal, and U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Leah Foley told reporters at a news conference late Thursday night it’s believed Valente and Loureiro studied in the same academic program in Portugal in the 1990s.
It was only the past day or two that the “link began to be established,” between the two puzzling crimes, Foley told reporters as authorities.
Valente’s last known address was in Miami, but he had rented a hotel room in Boston in late November, Foley said. On Dec. 1, he rented a gray Nissan Sentra, which was later observed intermittently in the campus area over the next 12 days leading up to the shooting, she said.
How investigators tracked suspect down
Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez said local police helped tracked down Valente thanks, in part, to surveillance video and a detailed tip about a vehicle being driven by a person who noted odd behavior by the suspect.
“I’m being dead serious. Police need to look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental,” the tipster told police, according to a complaint released by Rhode Island authorities. “That was the car he was driving.”
The tip and surveillance video, along with the use of license-plate reader technology led investigators to a car rental agency in Massachusetts. There, police obtained a copy of the rental agreement with the suspect’s name, as well as video of the suspect that matched the videos of the person of interest seen on the Brown University campus on the day of the shooting.
What happened at New Hampshire storage facility
Authorities said that discovery ultimately led them to a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, on the border with Massachusetts, where Valente had rented a unit. Foley, the U.S. attorney, said investigators believe Valente had fled to the storage facility shortly after the shooting of the MIT professor on Monday night.
By Thursday night, investigators were closing in on the storage facility, obtaining a search warrant, which FBI SWAT teams executed shortly before 9 p.m.
Authorities said Valente’s body was found in a storage unit next to the one he had rented. He was found with a satchel containing two firearms.
The two Brown students who were killed were identified as 19-year-old Ella Cook and 18-year-old MukhammadAziz Umurzokov. They were both fatally struck by gunfire when the shooter burst into the first-floor auditorium where a review session for an economics course was taking place.
The building was unlocked for exams being held in the building at the time of the shooting, the university president said.
Authorities also said Thursday someone confronted the gunman in a bathroom in the building and said he felt like he didn’t belong there.
The entrance of the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) that is located t the municipality of Tecoluca, in San Vicente, El Salvador, on October 12, 2023. (Alex Pena/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — A Venezuelan migrant who was deported from the United States to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison last year has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, alleging he was wrongfully removed without due process.
Attorneys for Neiyerver Adrián Leon Rengel say their client’s removal violated his rights.
“Through a series of unconstitutional and ultra vires acts by high-ranking federal officials and law enforcement officers, Plaintiff Neiyerver Adrián Leon Rengel was wrongly identified as a member of the gang Tren de Aragua, repeatedly denied due process, falsely imprisoned, intentionally deceived, and — ultimately — illegally sent to El Salvador in blatant violation of a court order,” the lawsuit filed on Tuesday states.
Rengel is one of more than 250 Venezuelan nationals released to their home country from CECOT in a prisoner swap last July, after being removed from the U.S. under the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th century wartime authority used to remove noncitizens with little-to-no due process.
The Trump administration deported two planeloads of alleged migrant gang members to the El Salvador prison by arguing that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is a “hybrid criminal state” that is invading the United States.
Rengel is seeking $1.3 million in damages.
According to the complaint, Rengel presented himself at a U.S. port of entry several years ago, complied with all immigration requirements, and was awaiting an immigration hearing that was set for 2028.
“On the morning of his birthday, March 13, 2025, while he was headed to work, Plaintiff was caught in the Administration’s scheme and would soon experience the full force of its unconstitutional and unlawful policies,” the complaint states. “At the time of his arrest, the only justification offered by ICE officers was that Plaintiff’s tattoos indicated his membership in TdA. Plaintiff immediately rebutted that identification, as he has never had any affiliation with TdA or any other gang.”
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security disputed the allegations in the suit.
“Neiyerver Adrian Leon Rengel entered our country illegally in 2023 from Venezuela and is an associate of Tren De Aragua. This illegal alien was deemed a public safety threat as a confirmed associate of the Tren de Aragua gang and processed for removal from the U.S.,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
“We hear far too much about gang members and criminals’ false sob stories and not enough about their victims,” the statement said. “We are confident in our law enforcement’s intelligence, and we aren’t going to share intelligence reports and undermine national security every time a gang member denies he is one.”
Rengel was held at the Salvadoran prison for four months. During that time, he alleges he was beaten by guards, denied medical care, and held without contact with his family or legal counsel.
“These conditions and the physical abuse inflicted on Plaintiff were the direct, proximate result of the decisions of federal officials who placed and maintained him in constructive U.S. custody at CECOT, and they constitute cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment,” the complaint states.
