Woman Shot on Capital Beltway as D.C. Surrenders Roads to Violence

A woman was shot on the Capital Beltway Sunday afternoon — broad daylight, outer loop, near Branch Avenue — and the people entrusted with keeping order in the nation's capital have little to say about it.

Maryland State Police say the victim was hit in the shoulder around 2:20 p.m. in what she described as a road rage incident. She told investigators the shooter drove a dark-colored Nissan Altima with Virginia plates. That's the extent of what authorities have offered the public. WJLA reported the injuries as non-life-threatening — a small mercy on a highway that has seen far worse.

This is what life looks like in the commuter corridors feeding the seat of federal power. The same class of officials who deploy thousands of officers, barricades, and surveillance assets to protect government buildings and political events cannot guarantee that a woman driving the Beltway on a Sunday afternoon won't catch a bullet over a traffic dispute.

And it is not just Washington. The same weekend told the same story across the country. In North Charleston, South Carolina, a man was found with a single gunshot wound in a residential driveway just before 11 p.m. Friday. He died at the hospital. No suspects. No answers. Live 5 News reported that the Charleston County Coroner's Office had not even released the victim's name.

In Chicago's South Side — a city that has become synonymous with progressive prosecution and repeated failure — two men were shot Friday morning in Chicago Lawn after a fight with a stranger. The 27-year-old was pronounced dead at the University of Chicago Medical Center. The 38-year-old was in critical condition at Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, according to the Chicago Sun-Times. Area 1 detectives are investigating. Chicago residents have heard that before.

In Boston, police finally identified a man shot and killed late last month in a Dorchester apartment as 21-year-old Jimmy Ortega Richardson. MassLive reported that 20-year-old Joseph Bailey now faces a murder charge. The homicide unit is, in the department's words,