A man who injured four people in a shooting before killing himself last week in Northwest Washington, D.C., appears to have spent at least part of his life in Montgomery County, attending Wheaton High School and working as a lifeguard at a local pool.
Raymond Spencer, 23, of D.C. and Fairfax, Va., fired more than 200 shots from a fifth-floor apartment in D.C.’s Van Ness neighborhood Friday evening, injuring four people including a 12-year-old girl, according to the Metropolitan Police Department.
The shooting ocurred near the Edmund Burke School on Connecticut Avenue NW, and the gun fire shattered a glass walkway, The Washington Post reported. The school was put on lockdown. Bullets also damaged surrounding businesses.
Spencer later killed himself in his apartment, police said. Authorities recovered six guns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition from the apartment. Authorities have not yet determined Spencer’s motive.
D.C. Police Chief Robert Contee III said during a press conference on Monday that Spencer attended Wheaton High School, worked as a lifeguard and in 2017 briefly served in the U.S. Coast Guard.
It was not clear exactly where he lived in Montgomery County or how long he was a county resident.
Spencer last attended Wheaton High in 2016, according to Montgomery County Public Schools spokesman Chris Cram. He did not have additional information.
Online athletic records show that Spencer was on the school’s track team in the fall of 2013, when he was a freshman.
Spencer also worked as a seasonal employee for the Montgomery County Recreation Department Aquatics Team, according to spokeswoman Judy Stiles. She declined to provide additional information.
In August 2016, the recreation department posted on Facebook that Spencer was a lifeguard at the Wheaton/Glenmont Outdoor Pool when he became disoriented when getting out of the water. When he fell back into the pool, a fellow lifeguard and a pool aide rescued him from the pool, according to the department. Spencer had no pulse or respirations and was given CPR by another lifeguard and a firefighter, according to the post.
Spencer was taken to Suburban Hospital in Bethesda and eventually regained consciousness, according to the recreation department.
Two of the lifeguards who were involved in rescuing Spencer at the time did not respond to inquiries from Bethesda Beat on Monday.
Dan Schere can be reached at daniel.schere@bethesdamagazine.com
