The Secret Service shot and wounded an armed man on Monday afternoon just south of the White House in a burst of gunfire that also grazed a young bystander in an area packed with pedestrians, officials said.
There was no indication that the man, who was taken to a hospital with multiple gunshot wounds, was targeting anyone in the executive complex, Chris McDonald, a congressional affairs official with the Secret Service, wrote in an email to Congress after the episode.
“President Trump was not in any danger, and there is currently no known nexus between the incident and the White House,” Mr. McDonald wrote.
A motorcade with Vice President JD Vance had passed through the area — a heavily trafficked route for official vehicles, as well as people visiting the nearby Washington Monument — shortly before the confrontation took place, officials told reporters.
The condition of the armed man, who was not identified, is not known. A firearm was recovered at the scene. A 15-year-old boy who was shot was being treated for a non-life-threatening gunshot wound, officials said. Matt Quinn, the deputy director of the Secret Service, told reporters that investigators think the boy was shot by the gunman, but he later appeared to hedge his earlier statement when asked again.
“We’ll let the doctors figure that out,” Mr. Quinn said during a news conference near the scene.
No law enforcement officials were injured.
The episode began around 3:30 p.m. near the intersection of 15th Street Southwest and Independence Avenue, when agents walked up to a man “who appeared to be carrying a weapon,” Mr. McDonald wrote.
As they approached, he ran off and shot at them, Mr. Quinn told reporters.
The agents fired back and then apprehended the man, he said.
The shooting took place a little more than a week after a gunman stormed a security checkpoint at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner and shot a Secret Service agent in an attack that officials said was targeting administration officials.
On Monday, President Trump was holding an event at the White House around the time of the shooting. The Secret Service ordered reporters who were on the North Lawn of the White House to go into the press briefing room.
The police blocked off a wide stretch of streets east of the Washington Monument until the start of the evening rush hour, frustrating drivers who use the major highway bridges connecting the District of Columbia and Northern Virginia over the Potomac River.
The Metropolitan Police Department had said in a social media post that its officers were on the scene and that roads in the area would be closed for several hours. The police department is further investigating, Mr. Quinn told reporters.
Dozens of law enforcement officials, as well as a substantial contingent of National Guard members in green uniforms, flooded the area after the shooting, snarling traffic and confusing tourists on a postcard-perfect spring day.
Hundreds of members of the National Guard remain stationed in Washington even after the Trump administration withdrew many of them last year. They were deployed in August following Mr. Trump’s takeover of Washington’s police department.
Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice for The Times and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons.
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