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Police investigating shooting on board a Metro Red Line train

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August 6, 2017 at 5:30 p.m. EDT
Police were searching for three persons of interest in the shooting. They were last seen exiting the system at Silver Spring, Metro said. (Metro Transit Police)

D.C. and Metro Transit police are investigating after a teenager was shot on board a Red Line train near the D.C.-Maryland border Sunday afternoon, authorities said.

Metro spokeswoman Sherri Ly said that shortly before 3 p.m., gunfire broke out on a Red Line train headed toward downtown. One person, a teenage boy, suffered a gunshot wound to the abdomen, Ly said.

The shooting occurred as the train was traveling between Silver Spring and Takoma, Ly said. At Takoma, a Metro Transit Police officer assisted the victim, who was taken to a hospital.

The condition of the victim was not immediately known. Ly said he was conscious and breathing when he was taken to the hospital.

Authorities said the shooting occurred as the Shady Grove-bound train was pulling up to Takoma. Once at the station, a group of men believed to be connected to the shooting crossed the platform and boarded a train headed in the opposite direction, before exiting the system at Silver Spring.

Police are looking for three persons of interest, who are possibly armed and dangerous. Anyone who sees them is advised to call 911.

In a tweet, Metro advised Red Line passengers that trains were single-tracking between Takoma and Silver Spring because of a police investigation. Trains continued to single-track through late afternoon.

Shootings on board trains are a rare occurrence, but Sunday’s was the second such incident in the past two years.

Two teens in custody in shooting of man on Green Line train

A 24-year-old man was wounded in a shooting on Metro’s Green Line near Anacostia in February 2016. Metro Transit Police chief Ronald A. Pavlik Jr. remarked then: “This was a truly anomaly event.”

Pavlik said it was the only instance he could remember in 20 years of a person firing a gun while on board a Metro train.

An accidental shooting occurred on a Green Line train in 2003, when a man took out a pistol to show to acquaintances. The weapon discharged, according to Metro’s account from the time, and a female acquaintance was struck in the buttocks.

The 22-year-old man turned himself in to police and was charged with carrying a pistol without a license.

Man Sought In Shooting On Metro Goes to Police

Before that, according to reports from the time, the last shooting on a train was a decade earlier in December 1993. In that incident, a man on an Orange Line train was struck and wounded by gunfire near Metro Center.

This post has been updated.