Manassas resident: Nationals stadium shooting ‘a frantic, chaotic scene‘

A former Manassas City Councilman found himself in a melee following a shooting outside Nationals Park in Washington, D.C.

Ian Lovejoy and his girlfriend sat behind home plate during Saturday’s game between the Washington Nationals and the San Diego Padres.

During the 6th inning, shots rang out near the third-base gate, sending hundreds of fans panicking into the stands and onto the field.

“I’m’ not a baseball guy, and I thought to myself, ‘I didn’t know there was halftime for baseball.’ People were just leaving,” Lovejoy told Potomac Local News.

He soon learned something wasn’t right. As Lovejoy and his girlfriend left their seats, a passerby told them there had been a shooting.

“The overarching thing about this was that there was no information from the team put up on hte display in the field, nothing from the PA system, no texts, it was just us trying to figure out what happened,” said Lovejoy.

Eventually, the ballpark did put up a message telling poeple to leave, and then changed it, telling people to shelter in place.

The couple took refuge in the club restaurant and bar above their seats. With ballpark security preventing ball fans from leaving, many, like Lovejoy, who assumed an active shooter nearby, took cover behind tables and chairs.

Many people mistook the banging sounds of tables chairs being tossed around and used for shields for the sound of more gunfire, said Lovejoy.

“It was a frantic, chaotic scene,” he said.

Three people were injured in the shooting outside the stadium in what Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said was a dispute between two groups of people in two different vehicles.

Suspended following the shooting, the game resumed the following day with the Padres beating the Nationals 10-4.

Lovejoy served on the Manassas City Council for nine years, from 2012 to 2020.