Two terminals were evacuated in New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport after police received reports of a possible shooting.
According to local media outlets, police began receiving reports just before 9pm about possible gunshots heard in Terminal 8.
Quartz editor Zach Seward was in Terminal 1 by passport control at the time of the evacuation. According to Seward, an alarm went off at 10pm, but the scene remained “totally calm.”
“Then all of a sudden, around 10:10, there was a mad rush of people running down the terminal from the security area toward its end,” he wrote via Slack. ” [I] did not hear anything but everyone assumed a shooter and got down. [There was] lots of screaming. Then people started yelling to run, so everyone did, heading for exits at the gates and out onto the tarmac. Lots of people were tripped up, knocked over, etc.”
Seward was taken to the end of the tarmac at Terminal 1 with “a few hundred other people.” Buses collected some travelers, but it wasn’t clear where they were headed.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey released a statement saying that early investigations indicated that no shots were fired and there have been no injuries.