Shooter Drill Tricks Everyone Into Thinking Real Shooter Was At Home Of Air Force One [UPDATE]
Joint Base Andrews, the home of Air Force One, reported an active shooter on its Twitter account. UPDATE
UPDATE: Somebody messed up. The original post is below.
JBA is currently on lockdown due to a report of an active shooter. All personnel are directed to shelter in place. More info as it comes.
— Joint Base Andrews (@Andrews_JBA) June 30, 2016
The incident is ongoing at the Malcolm Grow Medical Facility. First responders are on-scene now. All personnel continue to shelter in place
— Joint Base Andrews (@Andrews_JBA) June 30, 2016
Joint Base Andrews, in addition to housing the President's airplane, is also home to the 1st Airlift Squadron, the 459th Refueling Wing, the 89th Airlift Wing, the 79th Medical Wing, the 316th Wing, the 11th Wing, the Air Force District of Washington, and a number of Air Force administrative offices.
The base was supposed to be conducting a drill for an active shooter this morning, coincidentally enough, but the base reports that this incident is not a drill:
The base was scheduled to conduct an active shooter exercise, however, reports of a real-world active shooter situation were reported.
— Joint Base Andrews (@Andrews_JBA) June 30, 2016
More information as we have it.
UPDATE 10:30 AM EDT: CBS News is now reporting that the drill was in fact responsible for the emergency, but that it was taken too seriously by someone somewhere. Thankfully, no one has been harmed. On the other hand, oops!
UPDATE 10:40 AM EDT: It looks as if the confusion was caused by someone seeing people with guns, who were actually pretending to respond to a pretend incident, according to the local NBC affiliate:
Officials at the base said they were conducting an active shooter exercise at 9 a.m., but around the same time, first responders received reports of an "real-world active shooter situation" at the Malcolm Grow Medical Facility.
Someone on the third floor of the medical facility saw two people walking across the base with long guns. The person didn't know there was a drill planned and called in the active shooter report, law enforcement officials told NBC News' Pete Williams.
If you are planning on active shooter drill, please make sure everybody knows beforehand.