UPDATE: 4:45 p.m.
A melee involving a fake machine gun and a bullied teenager robbed of his
Air Jordan shoes shut down service briefly at Metro’s Union Station on
Friday afternoon.
The incident was first reported as a shooting but Metro officials later
clarified that no guns were fired.
Instead, a “realistic training firearm” modeled like a machine gun was found
on the Red Line platform, though it could not shoot bullets, said Metro
spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein.
No one was in custody Friday afternoon. But police later arrested a teen at the nearby Metro Center with a BB gun. Investigators were still trying to determine Friday afternoon if he was involved in the fight several stations away.
The fight itself involved “more than a dozen” people and was broken up
around 1:15 p.m., Farbstein said. A Metro Transit Police officer was at the
station at the time.
One teenager was rushed to a local hospital with what a D.C. Fire & EMS
spokesman described as serious injuries. Farbstein said the injuries do not
appear life threatening. She said he was found in his stocking feet, having
had his Air Jordan shoes stolen in the scuffle.
The station was then shut down to Metro trains for about 30 minutes as
officers searched the tracks for a possible weapon. Red Line trains were
allowed to pass through but could not stop.
Amtrak service, which also uses Union Station, was not affected, according
to an Amtrak spokeswoman.
2:45 p.m. Metro officials now say that no one was shot Friday at Union
Station. Instead, “more than a dozen” people got into a fight on the Red
Line station platform, said Metro spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein. A robbery may have sparked the fight but no guns were fired.
One teenager was rushed to a local hospital, she said, but his injuries do
not appear to be life threatening. He appears to have been a robbery victim,
according to the preliminary investigation, she said.
Farbstein said she was not sure if anyone was in custody or
where the fight began. Police were still interviewing multiple witnesses.
UPDATE: 2:20 p.m. A teenage boy was seriously injured in the reported shooting at Union Station, according to D.C. Fire & EMS. He was being rushed to a local trauma center. Metro spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein had no additional details.
1:50 p.m. Metro’s Union Station stop was shut down for about 30 minutes Friday after a reported shooting occurred inside the station.
It was not immediately clear whether anyone had been hit.
The Red Line stop, which connects with Amtrak, MARC and various bus lines, was shut down at 1:15 p.m., with trains only allowed to pass through without stopping. But it was reopened at 1:45 p.m., said Metro spokesman Reggie Woodruff.
Police were still investigating but apparently a fight broke out in the station, someone took out a gun and a shot was fired, Woodruff said. It was not immediately clear whether anyone was hit – or whether anyone was custody, Woodruff said.
Last Sunday, a man was fatally stabbed on the Green Line.
