President Donald Trump has invited the families of two National Guard members to the White House after they were shot last week while serving in Washington, D.C.
“I said, ‘When you’re ready, because that’s a tough thing, come to the White House,’” Trump said Sunday evening aboard Air Force One.
Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, 20, died after being shot Wednesday near the White House. Her fellow West Virginian, Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, is in critical condition.
Trump confirmed he’s spoken with each of the Guard member’s parents about being honored at the White House.
“We’re going to honor Sarah, and likewise, with Andrew, recover or not, we’re going to,” he said.
The president noted that he spoke with Beckstrom’s parents, who are “devastated” about her death. He said the Wolfes are “unbelievably great people” who are praying for their son’s recovery.
Beckstrom’s father told The New York Times last week that he believed his daughter would not recover and her wound was a fatal one. He later shared online that his “baby girl has passed to glory.”
“This has been a horrible tragedy,” he said.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt addressed the shooting during a briefing Monday.
“President Trump and the entire White House are praying for Andrew’s full recovery at the request of his parents and their personal phone call with the president over the weekend, and we are keeping Sarah’s family and friends in our prayers during this unimaginably difficult time,” Leavitt said.
The shooting occurred at 17th and I Streets, just a few blocks from the White House. Trump was not there at the time because he was spending the Thanksgiving holiday in Florida.
The Afghan man accused of shooting Beckstrom and Wolfe, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, has been in the United States since arriving in 2021 through the Operation Allies Welcome program. The program allowed Afghans to be resettled in the U.S. after the end of the war, The Associated Press reported.
Lakanwal reportedly worked in a special Afghan Army unit known as Zero Unit. He resettled with his wife and five sons in Bellingham, Washington, but community members said he has struggled since March 2023 and has not been “functional as a person, father and provider,” the AP reported.
The U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro, said he drove across the country from Bellingham to D.C.
Leavitt noted that Lakanwal entered the U.S. in 2021 under the Biden-era resettling program.
“Here are the facts, the terrorist who ... gunned down American soldiers blocks away from the White House and in ambush was an Afghan national who was flown into our country by Joe Biden’s administration in September 2021 in the chaotic wake of their botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, one of the most embarrassing moments in the history of our great country,” she said.
“The terrifying truth is that the Afghanistan debacle is just a small part of Democrats’ complete and total betrayal of the American people during the Biden years,” Leavitt continued. “The tragedy that we just witnessed the day before Thanksgiving is a reminder than untold thousands of terrorists, gang members and criminals were invited into our country and remain here to this very day.”
Leavitt said as a result of last week’s shooting, the Trump administration is “actively re-examining” all of the Afhans who entered the U.S. under the Operation Allies Welcome program.
The shooting was a rare act of violence against the National Guard, who have been deployed to the nation’s capital using the city’s Home Rule Act. Their presence in the city has been met with protests from locals, but Trump and his allies say the troops have been successful in their mission to clean up the city and crack down on crime.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Trump asked him to deploy an additional 500 National Guard members to Washington after the shooting. There are already more than 2,000 members in the city.