US Capitol evacuated after false alarm, parachutists mistaken for ‘threat’

The US Capitol was briefly evacuated on Wednesday following a major scare related to an unidentified aircraft, which later turned out to be carrying parachutists for a baseball game pre-show.

Police in Washington DC tasked with protecting the Capitol, at around 6.30pm local time, called for an immediate evacuation of the building after it said that it had been “tracking an aircraft that poses a probable threat.”

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As the news went viral in the United States and brought back painful memories of the September 2011 attacks on the Twin Towers, police swiftly issued a clarification saying that evacuation order had been “out of an abundance of caution” and that there was “no threat” to the Capitol.

“The aircraft no longer poses a threat to the Capitol Complex and the USCP is now preparing buildings for reentry,” the US Capitol Police later said in a statement after it verified that the flight being tracked was not, in fact, a threat.

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While the police did not specify who the flight belonged to or where it was headed, NBC’s Capitol correspondent Garrett Haake tweeted, perhaps rather alarmingly, “Just watched some people parachute down over/near the US Capitol amid an evacuation order.”

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However, the media outlet subsequently reported that the plane contained parachutists from a group called the Golden Knights, the US military’s official parachute demonstration team.

NBC further reported that the parachutists were headed towards the nearby Washington Nationals Park baseball stadium to perform a pre-match show in observance of ‘Military Appreciation Night’ ahead of the Nationals‘ game against Arizona Diamondbacks.