Blake Hall
Joint Base Andrews in Prince George’s County, Maryland — where Air Force One resides — had an active shooter scare Thursday morning that, thankfully, wound up being nothing at all.
Turns out, the following tweets were the product of a shooting drill that a bunch of people at the base took to be a real crisis, i.e. a “lone wolf” shooter looking to do harm.
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 (@JBA_NAFW) 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 (@JBA_NAFW) June 30, 2016
The strange thing about it is though, it was also originally reported that the same folks who sounded the alarm knew that there was a drill going on, but still decided to push it to the side and announce that the emergency at hand was anything but …
The base was scheduled to conduct an active shooter exercise, however, reports of a real-world active shooter situation were reported.
— Joint Base Andrews (@JBA_NAFW) June 30, 2016
About an hour later, this was reported, by a familiar outside news source:
SOON: Update from #JointBaseAndrews regarding active shooter situation, drill confusion https://t.co/rwM7YwV49X pic.twitter.com/ugRuXTCNW3
— CBS News (@CBSNews) June 30, 2016
A misunderstanding. Thankfully.
For posterity, it came a half hour after this announcement from the base itself (which didn’t inform whether there was ever a shooter at all):
"All Clear." The lock down on base has been lifted
— Joint Base Andrews (@JBA_NAFW) June 30, 2016