ALEXANDRIA, Virginia -- Alexandria Police Chief Michael Brown on Monday shared the heroics of three police officers that responded to the shooting in which congressmen practicing for a charity baseball game were targeted last week.
Officers Kevin Jobe, Nicole Battaglia and Alexander Jensen were on the scene after James Hodgkinson opened fire on the field at a YMCA, wounding Republican Rep. Steve Scalise, two staffers and a lobbyist, according to The Alexandria Times.
When the shooting began shortly after 7 a.m., two Capitol police officers in plain clothes who were part of Rep. Scalise's detail immediately engaged the shooter.
"I cannot emphasize the courage that it must have taken for those two officers to stop that initial engagement with that shooter," Brown told reporters.
Jobe was the first Alexandria police officer to arrive at the scene when he advanced on foot from Monroe Avenue without cover toward the gunfight.
Battaglia arrived next and immediately began taking fire upon pulling up in her patrol car. She jumped out of her vehicle and moved toward the gunman while being shot at. She became pinned down under fire from the shooter behind a vehicle.
Although Battaglia was not able to return fire on the gunman, in drawing the shooter's attention away from the field, she enabled other officers to get into place to ultimately take down the gunman.
Jensen used his vehicle for protection and took out his rifle and engaged the subject at the same time. The suspect moved around behind home plate and was ultimately taken down.
Brown said that within four minutes, 38 seconds of the city police dispatch, the gunman was stopped.
"I could not be more proud of the officers of the Alexandria police department who showed up that day….One of the things that's real interesting is when an officer shows up it's a point of courage. [They think] 'Do I drive by and assess the scene or do I step in and go into a fight? Maybe a fight that I don’t know about.' These officers got that call and they answered that call on the 14th of June," Brown said.
