A bogus active-shooter alert sent the US Naval Academy into lockdown on Thursday, sparking chaos and a flurry of false information. The alarm was triggered by a message posted to an anonymous chat platform, but officials quickly traced the supposed threat to a midshipman who'd already left the academy and was at his parents' home in the Midwest, per the New York Times. A source tells NBC News that that student had been kicked out of the academy, and that they'd used an IP address while posting online to make it appear they were on campus when they weren't.
According to Lt. Naweed Lemar, a spokesman for the base where the academy is located, the lockdown was lifted by early Friday, reports the AP. Though no gunman was actually on the Annapolis, Maryland, campus, the panic set off a domino effect. As rumors churned across social media, the tension boiled over between a midshipman and a law enforcement officer. In the confusion, the midshipman mistook the officer for a shooter and struck him with a parade rifle; the officer responded by shooting the midshipman in the arm. Both received treatment and are expected to recover. The scare came on the heels of the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk at a Utah college event just a day earlier, adding to the nationwide anxiety about campus violence.
At the Naval Academy, emergency vehicles lined up, a helicopter hovered, and the campus fell eerily quiet as officials tried to figure out what was going on. A nearby military base also responded to the threat. School emails show that midshipmen were initially urged to take shelter and lock their doors, before a follow-up email clarified there was no evidence of gunfire and warned against spreading unverified information. Earlier Thursday, an unrelated, apparently baseless shooter report also rattled UMass Boston.
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