Driver in custody after crashing into gate near the White House
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Members of the US Secret Service working at the site of a vehicle crash at an exterior gate of the White House.
PHOTO: REUTERS
WASHINGTON - A driver crashed into an exterior gate near the White House shortly before 6pm on Jan 8 (8am on Jan 9, Singapore time) and was taken into custody, the United States Secret Service said, adding that the agency was still investigating whether the crash was intentional.
“We can definitively say that there’s no risk to the complex or the adjacent neighbourhood, and the investigation into his motivations continue,” Mr Anthony Guglielmi, the spokesperson for the Secret Service, said in a statement.
US President Joe Biden was not at the White House during the crash.
Images from the scene showed the back of a gray sport utility vehicle with a Virginia licence plate stopped before a security checkpoint at the perimeter of the White House complex.
No damage was visible, but the photos did not show the front of the car.
The Washington fire department also responded to the incident and said shortly after 7pm that it had cleared the scene.
Mr Guglielmi posted on X, formerly Twitter, shortly after 7.30pm that the vehicle had been cleared by local police and the streets around the White House that had been closed to traffic would be reopened.
At the time of the crash, Mr Biden was headed to Dallas to attend a wake for former representative Eddie Bernice Johnson after giving a campaign address in Charleston, South Carolina.
Officials have fortified the White House in recent years in response to instances of people jumping its perimeter fences.
The Secret Service was working to upgrade the fences throughout 2023 to double their height to roughly 13 feet (3.9m).
In May 2023, a 19-year-old man crashed a rented U-Haul truck into security barriers near the White House.
No one was injured in the incident, and the truck contained no weapons or ammunition, but the driver expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler and told the authorities he had been planning kill Mr Biden, who was at the White House at the time.
In December 2023, a Delaware man whom the authorities said was driving while intoxicated crashed into Mr Biden’s motorcade while the president was talking with reporters on the street in downtown Wilmington, Delaware.
That crash was considered accidental, and no one was injured.
There have been at least two deadly crashes near Capitol Hill in recent years.
Nearly three months after the riot on Jan 6, 2021, a car slammed into two Capitol Police officers, killing one and injuring the other. The assailant was shot dead after lunging at police officers with a knife.
In August 2022, another man drove his car into a barricade near the Capitol. The man then exited the burning vehicle and fired a gun into the air several times before shooting himself as police officers approached him. NYTIMES
