Test at other NASA agency outside Ohio leads to false alarm at Research Center

CLEVELAND - The head of the NASA Lewis Research Center said that a test was going on at at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, led workers in Ohio to believe there was a shooter in the building.

An employee at NASA Glenn with the same last name as a person at the other center mistakenly received a call at about 9:30 a.m. from an automated system with the message that there “is a shooter in the building.” The employee did not realize it was a test.

That employee told his supervisor, who then called security and then police, said Director Ramon Lugo III.

The building was put on lockdown and employees were told to stay in their offices.

There was mass chaos at NASA as officials tried to find the shooter.
About an hour later they realized it was a false alarm.

The "all clear - the emergency is over" announcement was made across loudspeakers at about 10:50 a.m.

Investigators at NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. are looking into the matter. They want to see how this happened and how to stop it from happening again in the future.

WEB EXTRA: Click on the play buttons below to hear two 911 calls from family members of employees at NASA:

09:59am:
10:04am:

The call for a lockdown immediately got Brook Park police, the Cuyahoga County Sheriff's Department, SWAT and several officials to responded to the facility.

NewsChannel5 got reports that there was a gunman inside building 77 at about 9:45 a.m. Two ambulances were kept at the main gate to the facility, which is located near Cleveland Hopkins International Airport.

There was even a viewer who has connections inside the research center who said there were reports of shots fired. An e-mail into newsnet5.com said the viewer had been communicating with someone in the building who said one person had been shot and the shooter was unaccounted for.

A NASA employee who was not working Friday said Brook Park police conducted an office-to-office search.

At the time, a spokeswoman for NASA Glenn said that there was an unverified report of a possible activity involving a gun. Katherine Martin said Glenn is implementing proper action for employees and facilities.

NASA Glenn is named after Ohio-born astronaut John Glenn and has more than 3,400 employees and contract workers. It recently developed key components of a new moon rocket.