WASHINGTON — A Connecticut woman who was shot to death by police after a car chase that began when she tried to breach a barrier at the White House suffered from postpartum depression, her mother said.
The chase Thursday unfolded between two national landmarks, briefly shuttered the chambers where federal lawmakers were debating how to end a government shutdown and stirred fresh panic in a city where a gunman two weeks ago killed 12 people.
Two law enforcement officials identified the driver as 34-year-old Miriam Carey of Stamford, Conn. She was traveling with a 1-year-old girl who avoided serious injury and was taken into protective custody. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation.
Carey's mother, Idella Carey, told ABC News on Thursday night that her daughter began suffering from postpartum depression after giving birth to her daughter, Erica, last August.
"A few months later, she got sick," she said. "She was depressed. ... She was hospitalized."
Idella Carey said her daughter had "no history of violence" and she didn't know why she was in Washington on Thursday. She said she thought Carey was taking Erica to a doctor's appointment in Connecticut.
Read tomorrow's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette for full details.
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