For Shooting Suspect, a Long Path of Conflict From Afghanistan to America
“Rahmanullah Lakanwal, an Afghan who served in a paramilitary unit with U.S. forces, fatally shot one National Guard member and critically wounded another in Washington, D.C. Lakanwal, who had resettled in Bellingham, Washington, after the Taliban takeover, is facing charges of assault and murder. His past involvement with a controversial Afghan paramilitary unit and reported mental health issues are under investigation.
Rahmanullah Lakanwal was among the Afghans who came to the United States after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. Earlier, he served in a paramilitary unit that worked with U.S. forces.
Rahmanullah Lakanwal’s path from a village in Afghanistan to the corner in Washington, D.C., where authorities say he opened fire on two National Guard troops was forged by America’s longest war.
He was 5 years old when the U.S. military invaded after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and as a young man he enlisted with a “Zero Unit,” an Afghan paramilitary force that worked with Americans.
That connection appears to have given Mr. Lakanwal a ticket out of Afghanistan when the Taliban toppled the American-backed government in 2021, allowing him to flee with his wife and children. They began a new life in Bellingham, Wash., where he worked as a delivery driver and his children played soccer in the hallways of their modest apartment complex.
On Thursday, the authorities were scrambling to understand what motivated Mr. Lakanwal to forgo that new start, drive cross-country to Washington, where officials say he fatally shot one Guard member and critically wounded another outside a Metro station.
It was also unclear why he chose the street corner where Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe and Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom of the West Virginia National Guard were patrolling on Wednesday afternoon. Officials say he ambushed them outside the Farragut West Metro station, firing repeatedly at one Guard member with a .357 revolver and then turning it on the other before he was shot himself.
Currently Mr. Lakanwal is under watch at a Washington, D.C., hospital, where he is being treated for his wounds. He is being charged with three counts of assault with intent to kill while armed, said Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. President Trump announced on Thursday evening that Specialist Beckstrom had died of her wounds, which meant the suspect was now expected to be charged with first-degree murder.
Mr. Lakanwal was raised in a village in the province of Khost in southeastern Afghanistan, growing up in a country at war. At some point, he joined a Zero Unit, according to a person briefed on the investigation and an Afghan intelligence officer familiar with the matter. Zero Units, which were formally part of the Afghan intelligence service but operated outside the usual chain of command, were largely recruited, trained, equipped and overseen by the C.I.A., according to Human Rights Watch.
These units specialized in night raids and clandestine missions; Taliban officials and human rights groups described them as “death squads.” Human Rights Watch said it had documented several instances in which the units were responsible for “extrajudicial executions and enforced disappearances, indiscriminate airstrikes, attacks on medical facilities, and other violations of international humanitarian law.” The C.I.A. has denied such allegations of brutality, saying they were the result of Taliban propaganda.
Mr. Lakanwal’s unit was based in Kandahar, a city that was devastated by bombings and assassinations during the war. According to an intelligence officer, one of Mr. Lakanwal’s brothers was the unit’s deputy commander.
A childhood friend, who asked to be identified only as Muhammad because he feared Taliban reprisals, said that Mr. Lakanwal had suffered from mental health issues and was disturbed by the casualties his unit had caused.
“He would tell me and our friends that their military operations were very tough, their job was very difficult, and they were under a lot of pressure,” Muhammad said.
Zero Units ended up playing a pivotal role in the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, securing the remaining U.S. and NATO bases and the Kabul airport. As the Taliban retook control, many members of the Kandahar unit were evacuated with U.S. help. Many resettled in the Seattle area.
Mr. Lakanwal was among the thousands of Afghans who were brought to the United States as part of a temporary program called Operation Allies Welcome. That program was put in place under President Biden to manage the immigration of Afghan nationals fleeing Taliban rule, including those who had helped U.S. troops.
The program allowed about 76,000 evacuated Afghans to enter the United States for humanitarian reasons after the U.S. military’s chaotic retreat, according to the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute.
The State Department approved Whatcom County, Wash., on the Canadian border, as a resettlement location for World Relief, a Christian humanitarian organization that helps refugees navigate their first 90 days in the United States. Dozens of Afghan families arrived in the county in the weeks after the Taliban takeover.
Mr. Lakanwal ended up in Bellingham, the Whatcom County seat. Authorities said he lived there with his wife and several children.
He received asylum from the U.S. government in April, according to three people with knowledge of the case who were not authorized to speak publicly.
For several weeks this past summer, according to information provided by Amazon, Mr. Lakanwal worked as a driver for Amazon Flex, delivering packages as an independent contractor. His last delivery was in August.
Kristina Widman said she owned a property in Bellingham that was at one time rented to him and his family. The rental had been set up through World Relief, Ms. Widman said.
In a statement, World Relief declined to say whether it had helped Mr. Lakanwal or his family and said it did not sponsor Afghans brought to the United States since 2021. Instead, the group said it provided services “to those assigned to us” by the government.
Calin Lincicum, a former neighbor, described the apartment complex where Mr. Lakanwal had lived most recently as a rent-subsidized home for “hard cases” — people with disabilities, fleeing domestic violence, in recovery and older residents on oxygen.
He and other neighbors said Mr. Lakanwal’s family kept to themselves, but he recalled once discussing Afghan food with Mr. Lakanwal’s wife. Some neighbors, emerging from the building into the gray Thanksgiving afternoon, said they felt unsettled to learn that the suspect had lived in the same complex.
Rachael Haycox said she had been asleep inside her third floor unit in the Bellingham apartments when the sound of a raid woke her around 3 a.m. on Thursday.
“We thought they were ICE at first,” Ms. Haycox said. “But they yelled, ‘F.B.I.’ and that they had a search warrant.”
She said a drone and a wheeled robot were sent into the apartment for the search, which lasted about two hours. By Thursday afternoon, law enforcement officers had gone, and nobody responded to knocks on the now-cracked apartment door.
Reporting was contributed by Lauren McCarthy, Minho Kim, Jonathan Wolfe, Elian Peltier, Thomas Gibbons-Neff, Fahim Abed, Soumya Karlamangla, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs and Sofia Schwarzwalder. Alain Delaquérière contributed research.
Campbell Robertson reports for The Times on Delaware, the District of Columbia, Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and West Virginia.
Hamed Aleaziz covers the Department of Homeland Security and immigration policy for The Times.
Jack Healy is based in Colorado and covers the west and southwest.“
