Man Arrested After Gun Found In Bag at House Office Building

A congressional staffer was arrested Thursday morning after bringing a gun into the Longworth House Office Building on Capitol Hill, Capitol Police announced.

Jeffrey Allsbrooks, a staffer with the House Chief Administrative Office, brought the gun in a bag, Capitol Police said. Officers spotted the gun in a bag passed through an x-ray machine at about 7:40 a.m. as Allsbrooks went through security, and authorities arrested Allsbrooks just four minutes later.

Allsbrooks, 57, told Capitol Police that he forgot that the gun was in his bag. Capitol Police said that they were charging him for carrying a pistol without a license.

“This case remains under investigation and the Department is looking into what happened before, during and after those four minutes,” Capitol Police said in a statement.

Capitol Police sent out an alert about 20 minutes after the gun was first noticed, urging people inside to move to the nearest office and stay away from windows and doors. Nobody was permitted to enter or exit during the lockdown, which lasted several minutes, The Washington Post reported.

The incident is just the latest security scare since the Capitol riot on Jan. 6. Several office buildings on the Hill have been evacuated in recent months due to bomb threats, and in April, a Capitol Police officer was killed after a car rammed into a barrier just outside the complex.