VIDEO-Shooting at NSA headquarters leaves one dead - The Washington Post

Local television showed two damaged vehicles near a gate and emergency workers loading an injured uniformed man into an ambulance. (AP)

One person was killed and another was injured Monday morning when police with the National Security Agency opened fire on a vehicle whose driver refused commands to stop at a security gate, according to a statement from the agency.

The vehicle slammed into a police cruiser after shots were fired. The brief statement says one person was pronounced dead at the scene and another was taken to an area hospital. Authorities did not describe how the two were injured. An NSA police officer also was hurt in the incident.

Law enforcement officials familiar with the case said the two men in the vehicle were dressed as women and that they had earlier robbed another man of the SUV from a motel on Route 1 in Howard County.

One of the officials, who spoke on the condition they not be named to discuss a pending case, said the incident began in Baltimore City on Sunday when the three met. The exact circumstances were still being sorted out by police. Several law enforcement officials said the trio spent the night at a Howard County motel.

Mary Phelan, a spokeswoman for the the Howard County Police Department, confirmed that the SUV involved in the NSA incident had been reported stolen from a motel on Route 1 in Jessup on Monday morning.

The NSA statement says the incident occurred shortly before 9 a.m. when the vehicle entered the NSA complex off the Baltimore Washington Parkway in Anne Arundel County and “failed to obey an NSA police officer’s routine instructions for safely exiting the secure campus.” The statement says security barriers were raised.

The NSA said that the “vehicle accelerated toward an NSA police vehicle blocking the road” and that police “fired at the vehicle.” It then crashed into the police vehicle.

Amy J. Thoreson, a spokeswoman for the FBI, said in a statement that authorities “do not believe [the incident] is related to terrorism.”

FBI crews from its evidence response team were processing the scene and agents were interviewing witnesses, she said. Deputy White House press secretary Eric Schultz said President Obama has been briefed on the incident.

Fort Meade has about 11,000 military personnel and another 29,000 civilian employees, according to its Web site. The facility sits near the areas of Odenton and Laurel and is the third-largest employer in Maryland. It houses other federal agencies in addition to the NSA.

Local television cameras showed two vehicles that were damaged near a gate at the military base. One emergency personnel worker appeared to be loaded into an ambulance.

Authorities did not release the identities of either person in the vehicle.

Earlier this month, a Beltsville man was arrested in a string of shooting incidents at public buildings around suburban Maryland, including one shooting at an NSA building. The building is along a stretch of road just east of the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, separate from the agency’s Fort Meade headquarters.

Hong Young, 35, a former prison guard, was a suspect in shootings at nine locations. No one was seriously injured in any of the incidents, which also occurred outside stores and along an interstate in Maryland.

He told investigators that he was “hearing voices” that told him to fire the shots. Police found 10 firearms, hundreds of rounds of ammunition and a crossbow in a search of his home.

This story is breaking news and has been updated numerous times.

Lynh Bui and Peter Hermann contributed to this report.

Dana Hedgpeth is a Post reporter, working the early morning, reporting on traffic, crime and other local issues.

Sari Horwitz covers the Justice Department and criminal justice issues nationwide for The Washington Post, where she has been a reporter for 30 years. Follow her @SariHorwitz.

Ellen Nakashima is a national security reporter for The Washington Post. She focuses on issues relating to intelligence, technology and civil liberties.

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