Department of Energy security forces and local law enforcement on Monday fatally shot an unidentified man who drove through a security gate at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS), the agency said in a press release.
The man “failed to stop” his car at a gate in Mercury, Nev., then led NNSS security protective forces and Nye County Sheriff’s deputies on an 8-mile chase into the site, which at 1,360 square miles in size is larger than Rhode Island.
The man eventually stopped and exited his car, and approached the agency and local law enforcement officers “with a cylindrical object in-hand [sic],” according to a statement from the Nevada Site Office of the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA).
Personnel from both agencies fired on the man, who died on-site, the release says. The department did not specify how many times the man was shot.
An NNSA spokesperson in Nevada said that the “Nye County Sheriff Office is responsible for law enforcement on the NNSS, thus their involvement.” The chase and shooting took place on the federal property, the agency spokesperson said.
The semiautonomous NNSA oversees the Nevada National Security Site for the Department of Energy. The facility is the former Nevada Test Site, once used for above-ground and subterranean nuclear-explosive tests.
SOC, of Chantilly, Va., holds the protective forces contract at NNSS, under a contract awarded in 2018 and worth up to $200 million over five years, with options. The contract is separate from Mission Support and Test Services’ NNSS site management and operations contract, which was awarded in 2017 and worth up to $5 billion over 10 years, with options.
SOC also provides protective forces at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Tennessee as a partner on the Bechtel-led prime contractor for that site, Consolidated Nuclear Security. SOC’s Y-12 work is contractually separate from its work at NNSS.
