A man was arrested by Washington DC police on Wednesday outside US Vice President Kamala Harris’ home. The police recovered AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, 113 rounds of unregistered ammunition, and five 30 round magazines from the vehicle of the man from San Antonio, Texas. The man identified as Paul Murray has been charged with carrying a dangerous weapon, carrying a rifle or shotgun outside of a business, possession of unregistered ammunition, and possession of a large capacity ammunition feeding device, CNN reported.
The arrest was made after police responded to a tip-off from an intelligence bulletin that originated from Texas of a suspicious person. A region-wide alert was issued for the 31-year-old. The arrest took place at 12.12 pm on Wednesday. Murray apparently had paranoid delusions that the government or the military wanted to kill him.
Vice President Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff currently do not live at the Naval Observatory, as the place is undergoing renovations. The couple is currently living at Blair House.
Harris, in her first address to the United Nations on Tuesday, said, the status of democracy depends fundamentally on the empowerment of women, whose exclusion from decision-making is a marker of a “flawed democracy”. Harris, the first woman, the first Black American, and the first South Asian American to be elected Vice President, voiced her concern over the decline of democracy and freedom across the globe in her address to the 65th Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women.
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“Today, we know that democracy is increasingly under great strain. For 15 consecutive years, we have seen a troubling decline in freedom around the globe. In fact, experts believe that this past year was the worst on record for the global deterioration of democracy and freedom,” she said.
Harris said the US was strengthening its engagement with the world organisation and the broader multilateral system, as well as rejoining the UN Human Rights Council.
She emphasised that even as the world confronts a global health crisis and an economic crisis, it was critical that “we continue to defend democracy”.
—With PTI inputs