White House Breach: Man Drives Past Barricade One Day After Intruder Runs Onto Lawn
The White House had a security breach for the second consecutive day after a driver failed to stop at an entrance to the complex in his vehicle.
The incident happened Saturday at the White House entrance at 15th and E Streets, when a driver did not stop after Secret Service ordered him to. The man’s car avoided hitting the barriers at the entrance and he then stepped out of the vehicle, a Secret Service spokesperson said.
The breach took place one day after a man scaled the fence at the White House and ran into the North Portico doors. A portion of the White House had to be evacuated after the incident.
The jumper, Omar J. Gonzalez, was taken into custody shortly after entering the doors. He narrowly missed President Obama, who had just departed on Marine One with his daughters for Camp David in Maryland.
A day after the incident, the White House said it was reviewing security and trying to determine how Gonzalez was able to scale the fence and run across the lawn without being stopped.
Secret Service Spokesman Edwin Donovan said the incident was “obviously concerning… What happened here is not acceptable to us, and it’s going to be closely reviewed.”
The White House has been breached a number of other times, including a 2011 incident in which a man shot at the White House. The man, who friends say described Obama as “the anti-Christ,” was arrested and later sentenced to 25 years in prison.
In a 1994 incident, the pilot of a Cessna 150 tried to fly the plane into President Bill Clinton’s bedroom, but instead hit the White House lawn and came to rest two stories below the president’s bedroom. The pilot of the aircraft, 39-year-old Frank Eugene Corder of Maryland, was killed.
There is no word on the identity of the person who drove into the White House on Saturday.