UPDATED: 3:50 p.m. ET
C-SPAN and others were reporting Thursday that multiple gunshots had been fired near the Capitol, including possibly outside the Hart Senate Office Building, and legislators and staffers have been told to shelter in place by Capitol Police.
Washington TV stations dropped regular footage to go to breaking news reports from the scene, where yellow tape had cordoned-off streets around the Capitol were evident on every channel.
The House and Senate went immediately to recess after the reports of fired shots, according to C-SPAN.
The "shots fired" alert comes only a little over a week after the mass shooting at the nearby Navy Yard.
MSNBC, Fox News and CNN all immediately broke into wall-to-wall coverage, which is still continuing as of presstime.
ABC and NBC each cut into daytime programming with a special report at 2:48 p.m. ET, which CBS doing the same at 2:51 p.m. Each stayed on for roughly 20-30 minutes, with all back into their original programming by 3:15 p.m. ET. Telemundo was the first broadcast network to cut into programming with their special report coming at 2:36 p.m.
Tim Baysinger contributed to this report.
