A gunman opened fire at the Republican congressional baseball team during practice at a diamond near Washington on Wednesday, bringing an epidemic of mass shootings into the heart of American democracy.
The Wednesday morning carnage left five injured – including House of Representatives Majority Whip Steve Scalise – and simultaneously raised troubling questions about the political rancour devouring the country even as official Washington put partisanship on pause and business ground to a halt.
Police identified the suspected gunman as James T. Hodgkinson, a 66-year-old Illinois man with a history of violence and social media posts attacking U.S. President Donald Trump and the Republican Party. Mr. Hodgkinson was mortally wounded in a shootout with Mr. Scalise's security detail and died in hospital.
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In the aftermath of the tragedy, Mr. Trump called for unity from the White House.
Republicans and Democrats stood together in the House in a display of solidarity after some of the most charged months in the country's recent political history. And the two sides vowed that the game for which the team was practising – a charity match with the congressional Democratic team – would go ahead as planned on Thursday, a rare ritual of bipartisanship more important now than ever.
Mr. Scalise and Matt Mika, a lobbyist for Tyson Foods, remained in critical condition late Wednesday. Bodyguards Crystal Griner and David Bailey, as well as staffer Zachary Barth, had been treated and released from hospital.
On Wednesday night Mr. Trump tweeted: "Just left hospital. Rep. Steve Scalise, one of the truly great people, is in very tough shape – but he is a real fighter. Pray for Steve!"
The scene of the violence was a diamond known locally as "Big Simpson" in the Del Ray neighbourhood of Alexandria, Va. The area is just 13 kilometres from the centre of Washington, but feels a world away: Modest brick and clapboard houses line leafy streets, interspersed with walk-up apartment blocks.
Witnesses described a surreal scene. From behind the third-base dugout, screened by a chain-link fence and next to a shed, the gunman lifted what appeared to be an assault rifle and started shooting shortly after 7 a.m. Marty LaVor, an Alexandria photographer who was standing at first base, told ABC the gunman "seemed very calm."
Mr. Scalise, the third-highest-ranking Republican in the House, fell to the ground near second base, where just moments earlier he had been fielding balls. Mr. Scalise dragged himself for a few metres, then stopped and lay motionless, Senator Jeff Flake said.
Some jumped fences to flee the field. Others dove into the first-base dugout, trying to stay out of sight. Representative Joe Barton's two young sons were at the practice: One took cover under a car and another in the batting cage.
Capitol Hill police officers in Mr. Scalise's security detail fired back. Owen Britton, who was in the YMCA next to the park, said he saw police firing from behind a black SUV before swarming and handcuffing the suspect.
By the time the gun battle was done, witnesses estimated, between 20 and 100 shots had been exchanged, with bullets slamming into nearby vehicles and the YMCA.
The congressmen tended to the injured. Representative Mo Brooks used his belt as a tourniquet for one victim, who was bleeding from a gunshot wound in his calf. Representative Brad Wenstrup, a physician with combat experience in Iraq, sprinted out onto the field to treat Mr. Scalise. He assessed the wound, tried to stanch the bleeding and gave him water and Gatorade. "He was losing a lot of blood," Dr. Wenstrup said.
It was only happenstance that things did not turn out worse. Most members of Congress do not have security details, and if Mr. Scalise had not been present with his bodyguards, there might have been no one to fight back immediately.
"The field was basically a killing field," Senator Rand Paul told CNN. "Had the Capitol Hill police not been there, he could have walked around the field and just shot everybody."
Kathleen May, manager of an apartment building across the street, said she heard the shots as she was getting her children ready for school. Outside, she saw a chaotic scene. People were scattered around the field, with several hovering over one man on the ground.
"Nobody deserves to be shot," she said. "They were playing baseball, man – it's America's favourite pastime. They're out there blowing off some steam and living life like they deserve to do. It's getting ridiculously out of control. Just the political divide and the hate. It's not going to get any better if we don't stop to think."
David Woodruff, a former congressional staffer who lives in the area, was jogging by when he heard two volleys of shots. "It's a quiet bedroom community," he said. "If you were to drop into this area, you wouldn't recognize that you were several miles from the Capitol."
Some Republican legislators blamed a polarized political climate for the carnage.
"This could be the first political rhetorical terrorist attack and that has to stop," Representative Rodney Davis, who was at the baseball practice, told CNN. "This hatefulness that we see in this country today over policy differences has got to stop."
Newt Gingrich, a former speaker of the House of Representatives and a vocal supporter of Mr. Trump, told Fox News the shooting was "part of a pattern … you've had an increasing hostility on the left." He referenced both the case of Kathy Griffin, the comedian who recently posted a photo of herself holding a facsimile of Mr. Trump's severed head, and a New York production of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, which frames the assassinated title character as a Trump-like figure.
Mr. Hodgkinson, who died of his injuries in hospital, expressed fervent opposition to Mr. Trump and the Republicans on his Facebook page.
A former home inspector from Belleville, Ill., an industrial town east of St. Louis, Mr. Hodgkinson wrote on March 22: "Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It's Time to Destroy Trump & Co." In letters to his local newspaper, he wrote that Republicans "hate" Americans and work to advance the interests of the ultrarich.
His Facebook displayed a picture of Uncle Sam with the face of Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator who challenged Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination last year.
On the floor of the Senate, Mr. Sanders said Mr. Hodgkinson had volunteered on his campaign. Mr. Sanders offered an unequivocal condemnation of the shooting and prayers for the recovery of Mr. Scalise: "I am sickened by this despicable act … Let me be as clear as I can be: Violence of any kind is unacceptable in our society."
Mr. Hodgkinson had been arrested several times, including a 2006 incident in which he faced two charges of battery for hitting a man with a shotgun and punching a woman. Last year, a neighbour called the local sheriff's department after Mr. Hodgkinson fired a high-powered hunting rifle dozens of times into a nearby cornfield.
Mike Bost, the Republican member of the House of Representatives for Belleville, said in a statement Mr. Hodgkinson had contacted his office 10 times since June of last year, but "the correspondence never appeared threatening."
The FBI said Mr. Hodgkinson left Illinois in March and had been living out of his white cargo van along the street near the baseball diamond. Former Alexandria mayor Bill Euille told MSNBC he regularly saw Mr. Hodgkinson at the YMCA.
Tim Slater, the FBI agent leading the investigation, said Mr. Hodgkinson's motive was unclear, and it was not known whether he sought out the area because the congressmen were practising there.
Perhaps the most striking aspect of the shooting's aftermath was the unity demonstrated by many U.S. lawmakers – an exceedingly rare occurrence in today's Washington.
"We are united in our shock, we are united in our anguish," House Speaker Paul Ryan said in the chamber to a standing ovation from both sides of the aisle. "We do not shed our humanity when we enter this chamber. For all the noise and all the fury, we are one family."
The two parties decided that the baseball game will go ahead Thursday. "If there's an upside to this, it brings guys together … We're all aghast that this could happen in our America," Donald Beyer, the congressman for Alexandria who plays for the Democratic team, said while standing on a street a block from the shooting.
Even the usually combative Mr. Trump struck a similar tone.
"We are strongest when we are unified and when we work together," the President said at the White House. "Please take a moment today to cherish those you love."
With a report from Associated Press
Adrian Morrow