It turns out the false alarm about an active shooter at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base that led to an airman shooting at a locked door was even more of a Charlie Foxtrot than originally reported: One security forces airmen suffered “a minor injury, a laceration,” during the Aug. 2 incident, base spokeswoman Marie Vanover confirmed to Task & Purpose.
- The Dayton Daily News first reported on August 14 that the airman had been wounded, noting that base officials had previously told the newspaper several times that no one had been injured during the kerfuffle.
- “At the time of the press conference, we were unaware of the minor injury,” Vanover told T&P; on Thursday. The injured airman returned to work the next day.
- Vanover repeatedly declined to answer questions about how the airman had been injured, whether the airman was wounded during the shooting.
- A security forces airman, whose name has not been publicly released, fired his weapon “in an attempt to breach a door that was locked,” the base announced in an August 2 news release. Base officials have not said how many times the airman fired or what type of weapon was used.
- The base has stood up a formal review board to examine what exactly happened on August 2, when Wright-Patterson held a planned and announced active-shooter drill. Someone thought the event was real and called 911, prompting security forces to search the base hospital.
- One woman who said she was on base at the time posted pictures on Facebook showing a door with at least four bullet holes in it.
- “Make no mistake, these were real bullets that tore through the wall where we were hiding,” she wrote on Facebook before subsequently deleting the pictures. “That was real drywall we felt flying through the air. That was real terror that we felt. We were genuinely afraid for our lives today.”
- The woman did not respond to a request for comment from Task & Purpose. Vanover said she could not comment on the shooting until the ongoing investigation is complete.
- “There is no specific timeline for the review board,” Vanover said. “We want to ensure we are as thorough as possible to capture all content related to the incident.”
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