In one grieving West Virginia city, people adorned mailboxes and street signs with red ribbons on Friday. In a shaken town across the state, they pinned on blue ribbons.
These communities, Martinsburg and Webster Springs, are separated by mountains and 200 miles of twisting roads. But on Friday they were bound together in red-and-blue grief as the respective hometowns of Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe and Specialist Sarah Beckstrom, the two National Guard members who were attacked this week in Washington, D.C.
It was a somber holiday week for the two communities. At coffee shops, a hot-dog stand and veterans halls, people were planning prayer vigils and trying to make sense of the attack, which took place on the eve of Thanksgiving, killing Specialist Beckstrom and wounding Sergeant Wolfe. Sergeant Wolfe was in critical condition on Friday.
“This hit everyone really hard,” said one man who knew Specialist Beckstrom from grade school. “I feel broken from their pain and suffering,” a woman in Martinsburg said of Sergeant Wolfe’s family.
The authorities said the attack had been carried out by a 29-year-old man from Afghanistan who had worked with Americans during the war in his country. They said the suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, had driven across the country from his home in Washington State and opened fire on the two Guard members outside a metro station near the White House. He was injured in the attack and was in custody.
The death of Specialist Beckstrom, who was 20, rattled the 700-person town of Webster Springs, a tidy tableau of cafes and outdoor shops in the West Virginia mountains where she went to high school.
“This is a very rural area,” said Angie Cowger, the owner of the Custard Stand, the fast-food joint where Specialist Beckstrom once worked, dishing out chili dogs and desserts. “Everyone knows one another, and it’s so hard to see someone that young denied a chance to succeed.”
Ms. Cowger described Specialist Beckstrom as a fiercely protective big sister. She had enlisted in the West Virginia Army National Guard in part to help pay for college so she could pursue a career with the F.B.I. or other law enforcement agencies.
