Driver Runs Checkpoint At Nuclear Weapons Plant In Tennessee, Crashes Into Barrier And Flees

Monday, July 30th 2007, 8:01 pm

By: News On 6

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. (AP) _ A driver ran a checkpoint at a nuclear weapons plant early Monday and crashed into a barrier, then fled on foot, authorities said. Police were searching for the driver, but there was nothing to suggest terrorism played any role.

Guards at the Y-12 plant, a primary storehouse for bomb-grade uranium, said the man ``appeared to be impaired in some way'' when they stopped him around 5 a.m. at a security checkpoint near a rear entrance, spokesman Bill Wilburn said.

They asked the man for identification, but he hit the gas and drove through the checkpoint. The vehicle crashed 300 yards away into a gate-like security barrier that was activated by guards.

``When he hit that, he jumped out of the car and ran away. He left the car there with the engine still running,'' Wilburn said.

Wilburn said the guards told him the car had been hot-wired and there were no weapons inside. ``They checked the car very thoroughly before they moved it. They found nothing,'' he said.

Oak Ridge police were treating the incident ``strictly as a private-property, hit-and-run accident'' or simple trespassing, and they weren't going beyond their normal patrols to find the suspect, Chief David Beams said.

Steve Wyatt, spokesman for the National Nuclear Security Administration in Oak Ridge, which oversees the Y-12 plant, said the crash was ``well away from any sensitive areas of the plant.'' Y-12 makes and dismantles uranium parts in nuclear warheads.

``The important thing is our (security) system worked as designed and the security police officers did exactly what you do in these situations,'' he said.

A man matching the description of the fleeing driver was spotted about three hours after the crash. He was seen walking in west Oak Ridge, several miles from Y-12, but responding officers couldn't find him, Beams said.