Lanier, while refusing to speculate on the cause of the incident, said it “does not appear in any way to be an accident. This was a lengthy pursuit.”
It was the second major security breach in the US capital in less than three weeks. On September 16, a deranged gunman stormed the nearby Navy Yard and killed 12 people.
Thursday’s scare also came three days into a US government shutdown, which has raised political tensions and caused hundreds of thousands of workers to be sent home without pay.
The chief of the Capitol Police, Kim Dine, said he had no information to suggest a terrorist motive for Thursday’s “isolated incident.”
David Loewenberg, a 21 year old student, said he was in his basement apartment near the Capitol when he heard “a succession of seven or eight gun shots” and rushed outside.
“I could make out a black car that had either run up on the side of the curb or crashed,” he told AFP, recounting that he saw a police officer leaving the scene “hugging” a child in his arms.
“It was a girl as far as I could tell,” Loewenberg said. “The child was taken away pretty quickly by the police officer.”
Senators sheltering inside the Capitol told reporters they had heard up to six shots while police sealed off the building and emergency vehicles converged at the scene.
About half an hour after the incident began, the security lockdown at the Capitol was eased and the doors reopened.
Outside the Dirksen office building, which houses senators’ offices, staff not sent home by the shutdown could be seen taking cover behind trees and vehicles.
The White House was also briefly placed in lockdown, with Secret Service agents in tactical gear deployed around the building. The security alert was later partially lifted.
Matthew Jacobs, a 26 year old tourist from Wellington, New Zealand, was on a bicycle near the White House when the car chase began, and said the car tried to ram through a barrier but it “bowled someone over and took off.”
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