HARTFORD, Conn. — The sisters of a Connecticut woman fatally shot by police in Washington after she tried to ram her car through a White House barrier said Monday she wasn’t delusional and suggest she may have been fleeing danger.

The two sisters of Miriam Carey, who was killed Thursday with her 13-month-old child in her car, disputed the accounts of officials and their sister’s one-time boyfriend that she was under the delusion that President Barack Obama was communicating with her.

Additional Photos

This 2011 photo provided by Dr. Barry Weiss, from the website of Advanced Periodontics in Hamden, Conn., shows former employee Miriam Carey. The Associated Press

“What I do see is that perhaps maybe my sister was a little afraid being surrounded by officers with their guns drawn,” Valarie Carey said in an interview on NBC’s “Today” show. “My sister was fleeing. She was trying to figure out how to get out of there.”

The other sister, Amy Carey-Jones, suggests police overreacted or were negligent.

“I feel that things could have been handled a lot differently,” she said. “We still feel that there was maybe another story than what we’re being told.”

Valarie Carey said officials’ descriptions of her sister are “not the Miriam we knew.”

“She was not walking around delusional, which is what we really want the public to understand,” she said.

Police said Carey led Secret Service and police on a car chase from the White House past the Capitol, trying to penetrate the security barriers at both national landmarks.

In a CNN interview on Monday morning, Eric Sanders, the lawyer representing the two sisters, rejected the suggestion that Miriam Carey is partly responsible for her own death.

“She didn’t contribute to anything,” he said. “She had absolutely every right to be in the nation’s capital.”

The issue is how police handled the matter, he said.

Police in Washington say they’re reviewing the encounter and the use of deadly force.

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