Security personnel at Little Rock Air Force Base shot a rifle-wielding man who tried to enter the main gate Monday morning, base officials said.
The base was placed on lockdown for more than three hours after the shooting, which occurred about 9:15 a.m. at the southeast entrance on Vandenberg Boulevard west of Marshall Road in Jacksonville. Col. Charles "Chip" Brown Jr., who commands the base, said a white man driving a maroon Ford Expedition drove over a curb and struck a road sign near the gate before getting out of the vehicle with a rifle.
Two guards fired at the man and struck him an unknown number of times, according to Brown. The man was taken to UAMS Medical Center in critical condition. His identity had not been released late Monday, but base spokesman Lt. Amanda Farr said the man was not a member of the military.
Jacksonville police, the FBI and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives responded to the scene. Armed personnel diverted traffic on nearby streets as investigators cordoned off the main gate and searched the man's vehicle.
A man wearing explosive-resistant armor could be seen removing canisters and boxes from the vehicle and placing them under a tarp. The base later dispatched a remote-controlled bomb disposal robot to the Expedition. At one point, reporters and military personnel on the scene were asked to take cover behind vehicles.
The base announced by loudspeaker about 12:34 p.m. that the area had been secured and the lockdown had been lifted. The main gate remained closed until about 4 p.m.
"[Investigators] have determined there is no additional threat to the base and he was a lone actor," Brown said.
Pulaski County sheriff's office spokesman Capt. Carl Minden said the agency's bomb squad was called to a home just north of the base about 10:30 a.m. in connection with the incident. Minden said the squad assisted federal authorities in securing a residence at 4120 West Maddox Road, but said he could not release further information.
Property and court records show the one-story house less than a mile from the base has been owned by Misty Chambers, 34, and Larry McElroy Jr., 43, since 2004. A phone number listed for the residence was not in service.
Little Rock Fire Department Capt. Edwin Woolf said the department's bomb squad also responded to the house.
"Actually, our bomb guys went over to assist, over in Jacksonville, went over to assist FBI and Pulaski County sheriff's office, but it's really kind of out of place for me to talk about it," he said.
Authorities broke the calm of the rural West Maddox Road neighborhood off Arkansas 107 when at least a half-dozen vehicles from the base and law enforcement agencies arrived at the house and blocked the road for several hours, according to 72-year-old Kathy Wolf, who lives next door to the house that was searched.
West Maddox Road runs off Old Tom Box Road on the north side of the base's runway in north Pulaski County. The home is at the end of a gravel driveway with a gate on which a "No trespassing" sign is posted.
"It was a big, big deal to hear something like that going on," Wolf said of the commotion that had dissipated save for a couple of television camera crews Monday afternoon. "It's always been this quiet. No problems, no nothing."
Brown, speaking to the news media after the lockdown, said the shooting was recorded by surveillance cameras, but he provided few additional details. He didn't know what was found in the man's vehicle or why the man had attempted to enter the base.
The FBI is leading an investigation. Debra Green, spokesman for the Little Rock field office of the agency, referred a reporter to a news release issued by the base.
"Base officials will continue to coordinate with the Jacksonville Police Department, the Air Force Office of Special Investigation and the FBI," the release states.
The military guards who shot the man were temporarily relieved of their posts, in accordance with base protocol.
"Our security forces, the defenders that were at the gate, they are back at the squad room right now with leadership," Brown said. "They're going over their own statements at this time, and then we have our own protocol that we will handle, make sure they are taken care of, that they get enough care, if they need it. This is a traumatic event as you can imagine and we make sure that they're able to go back to full mission status before we release them."
Brown said the shooting occurred during a busy time of day at the base, when vehicles are typically backed up almost to Marshall Road, nearly 500 feet from the main entrance. A bystander, whom base officials did not identify, suffered injuries unrelated to the shooting. That person was treated and released from North Metro Medical Center in Jacksonville.
No other injuries were reported.
Before Monday's incident, Little Rock Air Force Base was operating at the third-highest security level on a five-tiered scale used by the Department of Defense.
The security level at the base and all other U.S. military installations was elevated in May to "Bravo," meaning there was an increased or predictable threat of terrorist activity.
Citing security concerns, base spokesman Sgt. Jason Armstrong said he couldn't "dive into details of what that means" but that "heightened security measures" had been implemented.
According to a Department of Defense news release from May, the elevated security level added more security personnel at some U.S. bases and directed security forces to do closer identification checks.
Brown said Monday the base would remain at "Bravo."
Levels range from "normal," in which there is no indication of an attack, to Delta, which is initiated when a terrorist attack is imminent at a specific location or has already occurred.
The Arkansas National Guard closed two gates at its North Little Rock base Monday morning as a "precaution," said Lt. Col. Keith Moore, a National Guard public affairs officer.
"What we're getting from the Air Force Base is that this was isolated," he said. "They had a situation at one of their gates, and we want to minimize that threat here."
Moore said one gate at Camp Joseph T. Robinson would reopen today for morning traffic, and the other will be closed until Wednesday.
The main gate, near the intersection of Military Road and Donovan Briley Boulevard, remains open. Additional security officers were added to that post, Moore said.
Brown said that although Little Rock Air Force Base has emergency procedures in place for such events, it was "surreal" to actually respond to one Monday.
"When you hear it, you think that, potentially, it's an exercise. Once it is in your mind that it is a known threat to the base, you go through the actions that we're trained for," he said. "You stand up leadership teams, we stand up our emergency operations center and then we make sure, through our loud voice, as well as Facebook and email, that we notify all families to go into a lockdown-type posture, whether it's in their homes, whether it's in their offices."
Information for this report was contributed by Noel Oman of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Metro on 06/16/2015