U.S. Army Specialist and West Virginia Army National Guard member Sarah Beckstrom, 20, died on Thursday, West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey said. The news came a day after she and U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe were shot outside a Washington, D.C., metro stop.
“This is not the result we hoped for, but it is the result we all feared,” Morrisey wrote on X. “Sarah served with courage, extraordinary resolve, and an unwavering sense of duty to her state and to her nation. She answered the call to serve, stepped forward willingly, and carried out her mission with the strength and character that define the very best of the West Virginia National Guard.”
Trump confirmed Beckstrom’s condition on Thursday and said Wolfe remained in critical condition.
“She’s looking down at us right now,” Trump said on Thursday, adding about Wolfe: “The other young man is fighting for his life. He’s in very bad shape.”
Beckstrom enlisted in the West Virginia Army National Guard in 2023 after graduating high school, and she volunteered to participate in the Trump administration’s deployment of the National Guard as part of its federalization of D.C. law enforcement.
“On behalf of Gov. Patrick Morrisey and the entire West Virginia National Guard, I extend my deepest condolences to Spc. Beckstrom’s family, friends, and fellow Guardsmen,” said Maj. Gen. Jim Seward, the Adjutant General of the West Virginia National Guard, in a statement on the unit’s Instagram. “We grieve alongside them and honor her memory by carrying forward her commitment to service, integrity, and excellence.”
Officials had charged Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal with three counts of assault with the intent to kill while armed and criminal possession of a weapon, but U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro said on Friday his charges would be upgraded to first-degree murder.
“It is a premeditated murder. There was an ambush with a gun toward people who didn’t know what was coming,” Pirro said on “Fox & Friends.” “And that is the homicide, and that is the murder that we’re looking at right now.”
Lakanwal, the alleged gunman, first entered the U.S. as part of a Biden-era program for Afghan refugees who fled the nation in 2021.
Reports indicated that the government vetted Lakanwal through either his time working with the CIA in Afghanistan, during the removal process from Afghanistan or during his 2024 asylum application, which the Trump administration approved earlier this year.
Trump said on Thursday he would “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover” from what he claimed was an influx of migrants.
