A normal person wouldn’t floor it when seeing the police.
Via Baltimore Sun:
He was too drowsy to drive, so Javonte Alhajie Brown said he handed keys to his rented sport utility vehicle to a teenage friend. The 24-year-old entered a route on GPS from Southeast Washington to his brother’s house in a Maryland suburb.
Then, Brown and a back-seat passenger went to sleep.
They were soon jolted awake by the shouts of police officers from the National Security Agency, Brown said. Some banged on the vehicle’s doors and windows, he said, while others pointed guns that resembled assault rifles at their heads as the SUV continued moving.
At least one officer fired at the vehicle Wednesday morning, striking the windshield several times and leaving the unlicensed 17-year-old driver with an apparent shrapnel injury. The driver’s mother and Brown, in interviews Friday, describe the incident as a mistaken turn and question the use of potentially deadly force.
They said the driver turned in error onto a restricted access road leading to the top-secret installation at Fort George G. Meade, between Baltimore and Washington.
Brown said his friend panicked when he saw police and hit the gas.
“I woke up with him slapping me in the face screaming, ‘I’m going the wrong way. I don’t know how I got here,” said Brown, who works for a Maryland subcontractor laying sewer and water pipes. “I was screaming at him,” Brown said, ” ‘How the hell did you do this? And why aren’t you stopping?'”
Brown’s job had once taken him to the grounds near the NSA. “I knew where we were,” he said, “and I knew we shouldn’t be here.”
The security breach and gunfire set off a public safety scramble amid fear of a terrorist attack – quickly ruled out – at a sensitive installation. The FBI took over the case as local authorities closed roads during morning rush hour.
Brown said the gunshots came a split second before the SUV hit a concrete barrier adjacent to a visitor’s gate accessible from an exit off Md. Route 32, east of the Baltimore Washington Parkway. One sign points to the NSA; another says “restricted address.” A third warns: “Person/vehicle subject to search.”
Brown said they had been headed to an area near U.S. 29 and Patapsco Valley State Park. He chose the parkway route because he said his friend was more familiar with that road.