By Brad Brooks
Dec 1 (Reuters) – The surviving National Guardsman shot by a gunman last week near the White House gave medical personnel a thumbs up when asked if he could hear them and also wiggled his toes in response, West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey said on Monday.
Morrisey said that Andrew Wolfe, 24, one of two West Virginia National Guard members shot on Wednesday, remained in serious condition.
“Andrew is still fighting for his life,” Morrisey told reporters at a news conference. “Andrew needs prayers.”
Wolfe, from Martinsburg, West Virginia, joined the West Virginia Air National Guard in 2019 and was deployed to Washington in August, according to the state’s guard.
Sarah Beckstrom, 20, the other West Virginia National Guard member shot last week, died on Thursday. Beckstrom enlisted in the service in 2023 and had also been in Washington since August.
The New York Times reported from her hometown of Webster Springs, West Virginia, that she joined in part to help pay for college and prepare for a law enforcement career.
The two were deployed in Washington after U.S. President Donald Trump’s sent National Guard forces there in August to help fight crime.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on Sunday that the suspect in the shooting, Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, was radicalized after he and his family moved to the U.S. in 2021. She did not elaborate on the claim, and the department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Lakanwal, who faces first-degree murder and other charges, was himself shot and wounded during his attack.
He moved to the U.S. under a Biden administration program that resettled about 70,000 Afghans who helped the U.S. during the 20-year war in their homeland. The U.S. withdrew in 2021 as the Taliban seized control.
Lakanwal, who was part of a CIA-backed unit in Afghanistan, was granted asylum under Trump.
Trump, in response to the shooting, said he was halting migration from “Third World countries” and that the U.S. stopped processing visas for Afghan nationals.
Investigators, who are exploring Lakanwal’s motive for the attack, said he drove across the country from his home in Washington State and shot the two Guardsmen with a .357 Magnum revolver, before being wounded by other troops.
Morrisey, a Republican, on Monday defended the National Guard mission in Washington, D.C. and other cities run by Democrats, which critics have said is a politicized move by Trump. The governor said that all 170 members of West Virginia’s guard who are in the capital had volunteered for the mission.
“They’re volunteering because they believe in the mission,” Morrisey said.
(Reporting by Brad Brooks in Colorado; editing by Donna Bryson and Cynthia Osterman)
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