Crime & Safety

UPDATE: Michigan Woman with Gun Arrested Outside White House After Immigration Speech

April Lenhart, 23, was not cooperating with authorities after she was spotted along a perimeter fence with a holstered 9 mm handgun.

Update:

The Secret Service said April Lenhart, 23, was participating in a demonstration outside the White House Thursday evening when she was arrested for carrying a gun, the Detroit Free Press reports. She lives in Mount Morris.

Our previous report:

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A Michigan woman armed with a gun was arrested outside the White House Thursday after President Obama’s speech outlining a sweeping plan to use his executive powers to spare nearly 5 million undocumented immigrants from deportation.

The woman, who had an unregistered 9 mm handgun in a holster, was identified as April Lenhart, 23, The Washington Post reports. It was not immediately clear where she lives in Michigan.

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Secret Service officers arrested her about 8 p.m. after she was seen walking along the White House’s north fence near Pennsylvania Avenue, said Ed Donovan, a spokesman for the Secret Service.

CBS News reports Lenhart is not cooperating with authorities. A male companion was checked and questioned extensively, then released. His identity was unknown late Thursday.

When the woman was apprehended, Obama had just concluded a speech on an expansive immigration plan that would refocus enforcement efforts on “felons, not families,” the Associated Press reports.

Obama’s use of executive powers has infuriated Republicans and some members of his own party.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, who will soon assume the powerful Senate majority leader position, said Obama “will come to regret the next chapter history writes if he does move forward.” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said the president’s plan has “cemented his legacy of lawlessness and squandered what little credibility he had left.”

The incident involving the Michigan woman is the second involving firearms near the White House in as many days.

On Wednesday, the Secret Service arrested an Iowa man who had a hunting rifle and ammunition in his car, The New York Times reports.

Bernie Kapheim, 41, of Davenport told Secret Service officers “that someone had told him that he should come to the White House, so he had driven to Washington to do so.”

Authorities “ interviewed him there and realized that there needed to be further investigating because something wasn’t right,” according to the report.

He was charged with possession of an illegal firearm.

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Photo via Creative Commons

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