Republished April 17, 2024 - 3:28 PM
Original Publication Date April 17, 2024 - 1:06 PM
GRAND FORKS, N.D. (AP) — The lockdown has been lifted at Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota after a report of a gunshot on Wednesday afternoon sent people indoors.
Security officers completed a door-to-door sweep but did not locate a source of the sound, the base said in a social media post. No injuries were reported.
The base said in an earlier post that security at the base received the report of a single gunshot near the medical clinic and base exchange around 1 p.m. The lockdown was ordered “out of an abundance of caution,” the statement said. The lockdown lifted about 3 1/2 hours later and "normal operations have resumed,” the base said.
State Sen. Scott Meyer said he was walking out to his vehicle at about 12:45 p.m. after having lunch at the base’s bowling alley, and he saw three or four squad cars with lights on at the commissary.
While driving out, he noticed barricades in the road and two other vehicles stopped at the base’s east gate. Then he heard a lockdown announcement for an active shooter over the base’s loudspeakers, he said.
“It keeps going across the speakers of the base, and you’re like — if that doesn’t make the hair on your neck stand up, it’s a creepy noise, and it was every about five minutes,” Meyer said.
He said he sat in his vehicle for nearly two hours, with “quite a lineup” at the gate. About 20 minutes after the loudspeakers last sounded, gate security came out and pulled the barricades back, Meyer said. Security personnel checked and scanned IDs as people left, and they searched vehicles, he said.
“I had all my four doors of my pickup opened, my console, my glove compartment, my end gate, my toolboxes. I mean, they were doing a full search,” Meyer said.
The base's website says that 2,200 people are assigned to the 319th Reconnaissance Wing. The base houses air and space operations.
News from © The Associated Press, 2024