Injured National Guard member remains in serious condition, but shows ‘positive’ signs
By Chelsea Bailey, CNN
(CNN) — President Donald Trump said he is very proud of the two National Guard members shot in last week’s attack in Washington, DC, calling 20-year-old Sarah Beckstrom “an incredible person” and 24-year-old Andrew Wolfe a fighter.
Wolfe, a US Air Force staff sergeant, and Beckstrom, a US Army specialist assigned to the 863rd Military Police Company, 111th Engineer Brigade, were deployed to Washington, DC, as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to reduce crime.
Speaking during a cabinet meeting at the White House Tuesday, Trump said he reached out to their families “very soon after this horrible event took place.”
“I want to pay my deepest respects to those two incredible people from the National Guard in West Virginia,” the president said, adding he has spoken with Beckstrom’s family since she died from her injuries Thursday.
“Somebody said, ‘How are they doing?’ I said, ‘the word is devastated,’” Trump said. “The rest of their lives, they’re going to be devastated.”
Wolfe, Trump said, is still “fighting for his life.” He also praised Wolfe’s mother for remaining “so positive” despite the circumstances and for insisting that her son will survive.
“He’s fighting very hard,” Trump said of Wolfe. “It would be amazing if he lives; it would be amazing – a miracle actually – but we’re very proud of those two people.”
During the cabinet meeting, Attorney General Pam Bondi said she visited Wolfe in the hospital yesterday and asked for continued prayers for his recovery.
“He’s got a long road ahead of him, but he is a miracle,” she said.
West Virginia governor shares ‘positive’ signs in Wolfe’s recovery
West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey said at a Monday news conference that Wolfe remains in serious condition but has shown “positive” signs of recovery.
The governor said his office was told that when a nurse asked Wolfe to give a thumbs up if he could hear, “he did respond.”
“And we were told that he also wiggled his toes, so we take that as a positive sign,” Morrisey added.
Morrisey remembered Beckstrom as “an amazing woman who lifted up people.”
“She is someone who is going to be remembered for a very, very long time, and she had her life tragically cut short,” the governor added.
The suspect in the shooting has been identified as Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan national who worked with the CIA for over a decade in Afghanistan before the US military withdrew from the country.
Lankanwal came to the United States in 2021 as part of Operation Allies Welcome, a Biden administration-era program that evacuated and resettled tens of thousands of vulnerable Afghans — many of whom worked alongside US troops and diplomats — after the American withdrawal. He applied for asylum in 2024, and it was granted earlier this year under the Trump administration.
The suspect faces at least one first-degree murder charge, the US attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro, told Fox News on Friday, adding, “There are certainly many more charges to come.”
Lakanwal was wounded during the shooting and taken to the hospital, authorities said. His condition is unknown, but he appeared in court virtually from his hospital bed on Tuesday and pleaded not guilty.
West Virginia National Guard remain in DC
At Monday’s news conference, Morrisey emphasized that guard members volunteered to be deployed to the nation’s capital and said 170 members of the state’s National Guard remain in Washington, DC, to support local law enforcement.
He said his office does “not have a specific date in mind” for when those troops will return to West Virginia.
Morrisey declined to directly address the source of conflicting statements his office released shortly after the shooting about the condition of the two injured guard members. Initially, a statement from Morrisey’s office indicated that both guard members had been killed, but it was later corrected.
“I could tell you that the process is that we try to get as much information as we can, accurate information, from the most credible sources,” Morrisey said. “In this case, that information was incorrect and then within 20 minutes we changed it.”
Shortly after the shooting, the Trump administration filed an emergency motion to keep the National Guard in Washington, DC, after a judge ruled that Trump’s deployment of the guard was unlawful.
City officials had argued in a lawsuit against the troops’ deployment, saying it undermined the city’s autonomy and was unnecessary.
Trump also asked for 500 more National Guard troops to be deployed to the nation’s capital.
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CNN’s Kaanita Iyer contributed to this report.
