Student shot after mistaken ID mishap with officer during Naval Academy lockdown

A law enforcement officer shot a student at the U.S. Naval Academy on Thursday during a lockdown that was prompted by online threats from someone who had been kicked out of the institution, a source said.

The shooting on the Annapolis, Maryland, campus occurred after the midshipmen, which is what all students at the academy are called, mistook a responding law enforcement officer for a threat and struck the officer with a parade rifle used for training, the source said.

The student the law enforcement officer shot was hospitalized and is expected to be OK, the source said.

Maryland State Police medevac and US Park Police helicopters at the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., where a shooting occurred earlier in the day, on Sept. 11, 2025. Jim Watson / AFP via Getty Images

Helicopter video from NBC affiliate WBAL of Baltimore showed someone being wheeled out on a stretcher to a waiting state police helicopter.

The lockdown was prompted by anonymous threats made on social media by a student who had been kicked out of the academy, the source said.

That student was not on campus but used an IP address to make it look as though they were, according to the source. The student believed to have made the threats was at home at the time, the source said.

Naval Support Activity Annapolis security and local police responded to the academy grounds at 5:07 p.m., a Navy official said.

The person who was injured and flown by helicopter from the campus was in stable condition Thursday night, the Navy official said.

The threats and the lockdown at the Naval Academy occurred a day after the fatal shooting of prominent conservative activist figure Charlie Kirk at a Utah university and on a day when unfounded threats targeted at least five historically Black colleges, prompting lockdowns at those campuses.