Officer injured after shooting outside National Security Agency

A sign outside Fort Meade, headquarters of the National Security Agency (NSA), after a shooting incident at the visitor's entrance in Fort Meade, Maryland, February 14, 2018. Shots were fired early Wednesday at the ultra-secret National Security Agency, the US electronic spying agency outside Washington, leaving one person injured, officials said. Aerial footage of the scene from NBC News showed a black SUV with numerous bullet holes in its windshield crashed into concrete barriers at the main entrance to the NSA's headquarters in Fort Meade, Maryland. Pic/AFP

One officer was injured in a shooting incident outside the National Security Agency (NSA), as the driver of a rented sports utility vehicle tried to enter a secured area, in Anne Arundel County, Maryland. Two people were taken into federal custody after the incident, The Washington Post reported.

However, the authorities quickly concluded that the incident was not a terror attack. An FBI spokesman said that one theory being investigated is whether the driver mistakenly turned onto a restricted parkway exit and panicked when he saw armed police. "Until we complete all the interviews, we just can't say definitively," The Washington Post quoted the spokesman David Fitz as saying.

Other aspects of the inquiry are not yet known, including who fired the gunshots into the SUV's windshield and how the vehicle crashed. Gordon Johnson, the special agent in charge of the FBI's Baltimore field office, said that "preliminarily, gunfire was directed at the vehicle".

He, however, refused to comment whether any NSA police officers fired at the SUV. Fitz said authorities ran the names of the three occupants of the SUV through databases and came up with no link to terrorism.

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