Authorities found no evidence that a shooting occurred at the Washington Navy Yard Thursday morning after a report of the sound of gunfire inside one of the buildings led to a lockdown of the installation, the site of a 2013 massacre.
D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said the massive police response was prompted when an employee inside Building 197, the scene of the 2013 mass shooting, called authorities at 7:29 a.m. to report hearing gunfire. The chief said the call did not appear to be a hoax and praised the unidentified woman for her vigilance.
“There was no criminal act here. We don’t believe it was a malicious hoax or anything like that,” Chief Lanier said. “An employee thought they heard something of concern. They made a call. That’s what we tell people to do.”
The alarm and lockdown around 7:30 a.m. drew a massive police response, with hundreds of law-enforcement officers from local and federal agencies converging on the installation in Southeast Washington that was the scene of a shooting in September 2013 that left 13 dead.
Officials noted that the communications and command structure problems that hampered the 2013 incident response all appeared to have been addressed and that Thursday’s response went smoothly.
News that the incident may have been a false alarm began to trickle out by 9 a.m., when D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services department officials reported all Navy employees had been accounted for and no one was injured.
By 10 a.m., the Metropolitan Police Department confirmed that officers had completed a search of the building where the report was made and that there was “no evidence of a shooting or injured personnel.”
The Navy also confirmed that that all personnel were safe and had been accounted for, issuing a statement more than three hours after the initial call saying: “There are no signs of a shooting, a shooter or victims.”
It wasn’t clear what sound the employee who called police mistook for gunfire.
Mark Woods, a Navy Yard employee, told WUSA that an alarm went off in the building where he was working shortly after 7:30 a.m. Thursday. Employees were told to shelter in place, and then police entered and evacuated the workers. He said he hadn’t heard any shots and didn’t know what was happening.
“We thought maybe it was a drill,” he said.
Police vehicles formed a security perimeter and shut down roads around the Navy Yard as a U.S. Park Police helicopter circled overhead. The incident also prompted increased security measures at the U.S. Capitol and around the White House.
Chief Lanier declined to say whether the woman who called police had been present during the 2013 incident.
The incident unfolded in the same Building 197, the headquarters of Naval Sea Systems Command, where gunman Aaron Alexis murdered 12 and wounded three others before he was killed by police two years ago.
Following the 2013 mass shooting, Building 197 was closed for renovations. The more than 2,700 employees who worked in the building were relocated during renovations and returned to the site — renamed the Joshua Humphreys Building — in February.
Communication problems and confusion regarding who was in charge among federal and local authorities hindered the 2013 response. Chief Lanier said Thursday that within 20 minutes MPD officers were able to reach the central control booth, where they could access the system of surveillance cameras that showed what was going on inside the massive facility.
Police were unable to access that same surveillance system during the 2013 attack, preventing officers from tracking the movements of Alexis as he stalked victims through offices and hallways and opened fire with a sawed-off shotgun.
“All the things that we tried to correct from the last incident went very, very well,” Chief Lanier said.
Vice Admiral Dixon Smith, head of the Navy Installations Command, said officials expected to finish a final sweep of the building Thursday morning and would reopen the building for access.
He said counselors would be available to talk to individuals rattled by the incident.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
• Andrea Noble can be reached at anoble@washingtontimes.com.
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