FORT MEADE, Md. (AP) - Two cross-dressing men who were fired upon by National Security Agency police when they disobeyed orders at a heavily-guarded gate had just stolen a car from a man who had picked them up and checked into a motel, police said Tuesday.
The FBI said the driver, Ricky Shawatza Hall, 27, died at the scene, and his passenger remained hospitalized Tuesday with unspecified injuries. An NSA police officer was treated for minor injuries and released.
NSA police opened fire on the stolen sports utility vehicle after Hall failed to follow instructions for leaving a restricted area, authorities said.
As it turns out, Hall and his passenger had just driven off in the SUV of a 60-year-old Baltimore man, who told investigators he had picked up the two strangers in Baltimore and brought them to a Howard County motel.
"We can't confirm there was any sexual activity involved," a Howard County Police spokeswoman, Mary Phelan, told the Associated Press on Tuesday.
The SUV's owner, who has not been publicly identified, said they checked into a room at the Terrace Motel in Elkridge at approximately 7:30 a.m. Monday, and that he used the bathroom about an hour later. When he came out, the men were gone, along with his car keys.
He called police to report the stolen car, and only minutes later, just before 9 a.m., the men took a highway exit that leads directly to a restricted area at the NSA entrance at Fort Meade.
The two men were dressed as women, but "not in an attempt to disguise themselves from authorities," FBI spokeswoman Amy Thoreson said.
Hall has a lengthy criminal record that includes assault and robbery charges. In 2013, Hall was charged after he assaulted a woman and stole a bottle of methadone from her pocket. Court papers show that Hall had been wearing a yellow dress at the time of the assault and was mistaken for a woman. In 2014, Hall was charged with robbery after stealing a vest and skirt from a Baltimore clothing store.
The FBI has ruled out terrorism, and no one has explained yet why the men ended up in a restricted NSA area.
However, the new timeline suggests they may have simply taken a wrong turn while fleeing the motel, about 12 minutes away.
Once so secretive that it was known as "No Such Agency," the NSA is now in some ways just another part of the suburban sprawl between Baltimore and Washington. Thousands of daily commuters who traverse the Baltimore-Washington Parkway pass its heavily-secured campus at Fort Meade each day. About 11,000 military personnel and approximately 29,000 civilian employees with security clearances work inside the barbed wire.
Similarly, the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, is less than a mile from the George Washington Parkway, a heavily-traveled link between downtown Washington and the Capital Beltway. The CIA also has a training facility known as "The Farm" at Camp Peary, also conveniently located along Interstate 64 in Williamsburg, Virginia.
The NSA is Maryland's largest employer, and Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, whose district includes the NSA campus, said its convenient location is critical.
He also said the NSA gate is far enough removed from the highway that it's easy to avoid ending up there by mistake.
"I drive by there every day, when I come from Baltimore to go to the Capitol. There's plenty of signage there," he said. "If you follow the signs that say "prohibited,' you can very easily get off. When you break the law, you break the law everywhere."
But it's not uncommon for drivers to take the wrong exit and end up at the tightly secured gates.
Most drivers then carefully follow the orders of heavily-armed federal officers and turn around without getting into more trouble. In this case, authorities say the men ignored instructions on how to leave, and ended up stuck behind barriers. Police ordered them to stop, and then things escalated quickly.