The woman, who had a 12-month-old baby in the car, tried to penetrate security barriers at the White House and the Capitol, before police shot her dead.
The infant survived.
House and Senate lawmakers were debating the US government shutdown at the Capitol as the incident took place.
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It was mid-afternoon when a woman in a black sedan with a young child on board tried to drive her car through a security perimeter fence at the White House.
Hitting a Secret Service agent as she sped off, she led police on a pursuit across Washington during which shots were fired.
The woman eventually crashed the car outside the Capitol building where she was shot at again.
Police chief Cathy Lanier says the 34 year old woman died after being struck by the gunfire.
"We don't know which officers fired, how many rounds of fire, I will say that both at the White House and at the Capitol security perimeters worked. The did exactly what they were supposed to do and they stopped a suspect from reaching the security perimeters both in a vehicle at both locations. Both the United States Secret Service and Capitol police officers from what I have seen so far in this investigation acted heroically in trying to stop the suspect from entering those security perimeters at both locations. We have two officers that are injured, one from Capitol and one from Secret Service, fortunately both of them will be okay but two officers injured just doing their jobs."
The child inside the car wasn't hurt and has been put in protective custody.
World News Australia Washington correspondent John Stempin says the incident comes as the partial government shutdown has left more than 700 thousand workers on unpaid leave.
"Emotions are running very high in Washington DC proper because of this shutdown, a lot of people are not getting paid and that will cause tension but both sides of the political spectrum have been really good and whipping up their supporters in the last few days trying to put pressure on the White House so, you know, if we find that this woman was motivated by the shutdown and the budget gridlock it probably won't come as any great surprise to anyone here."
With the woman now dead the task of determining just what her motives were could be difficult although the police are confident it was not an attempted terrorist act.
Chairman of the House Committee for Homeland Security, Michael McCaul.
"She may have had some mental health issues. Obviously the way she responded at the gate and the fact is, from what I understand, she didn't have any weapons."
The drama triggered a temporary security lockdown at both the Capitol Building and the White House.
Across town at George Washington University, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde warned that a failure to agree to lift the US debt ceiling poses a greater threat to the global economy than the current shutdown.
"People around the world are confused, bemused but they're certainly not amused by what is happening in this country because it will affect the global economy if it were to materialise but I personally have huge trust in policy makers and I hope very strongly that they will find a way to resolve this issue. In our view, it is mission critical that this be resolved as soon as possible, mission critical."
There was a similar message from the US Treasury which said a debt default could lead to another financial crisis as bad or worse than what occurred in 2008.
It said a default would be unpredecented and has the potential to be castastrophic.
Washington correspondent John Stempin says October 17 is the critical date.
Unless the debt ceiling is raised by then, the US government will run out of money to pay its bills.
"We're really starting to approach the precipice* here because the Treasury department is running of tricks to borrow money to allow the government to pay its debts and at some point here in the next, you know, week or so they're going to run out of cash altogether and not have any authorisation to borrow more and that means that the spigot* gets completely turned off and the bills that the government owes are simply not going to get paid, that's in the tomb of billions and billions and billions of dollars and that would be a terrible default and could cause a real economic collapse."
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