Driver dies after crashing into barrier near the White House

WASHINGTON >> A driver died after crashing into a security barrier near the White House on Saturday night around 10:30, prompting an investigation by the Washington police department, the Secret Service said in a statement.

“There is no threat or public safety implications,” Anthony Guglielmi, a Secret Service spokesperson, wrote on social media, adding that the crash posed no threat to the White House. The city’s police department said it was investigating the crash “only as a traffic crash,” but the Secret Service said it would conduct a separate investigation into the driver’s background.

President Joe Biden was at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, at the time of the crash, having arrived there Friday evening.

The crash occurred on the eastern perimeters of the White House, near the intersection of 15th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, a six-lane boulevard that connects the White House and the U.S. Capitol, Washington police said. Police arrived at the scene about 15 minutes after the crash and pronounced the driver, an adult male, dead.

Some images of the incident from WJLA in Washington showed a heavily damaged silver sedan crashed a few feet into the outermost White House barricade that instructs drivers entering the premises to stop.

In January, police took a driver into custody after a vehicle crashed into a security barrier at the same intersection. And last May, a 19-year-old man crashed a rented U-Haul truck into White House security barriers. He told authorities that he had been planning to kill Biden, who was at the White House at the time.

In December, a Delaware man who authorities said was driving while intoxicated crashed into Biden’s motorcade while the president was talking with reporters on the street in downtown Wilmington. That crash was considered accidental, and no one was injured.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.