A truck driver who attempted to ram a vehicle into a U.S. Coast Guard base in the San Francisco Bay Area was shot and wounded by law enforcement officers, officials said Friday.
According to The Associated Press, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said on X that the driver tried to “weaponize the vehicle to ram into Coast Guard Base Alameda” on Thursday night. He was taken into custody and is being held for a mental health evaluation.
A bystander was struck by a fragment during the incident, treated at a hospital, and later released, DHS said. No Coast Guard personnel were injured.
Authorities said officers gave the driver “multiple verbal commands” to stop, but he ignored them and “suddenly accelerated backwards at a high rate of speed directly toward them.”
“When the vehicle’s actions posed a direct threat to the safety of Coast Guard and security personnel, law enforcement officers discharged several rounds of defensive live fire,” DHS said.
The driver was wounded in the stomach and is expected to survive. Homeland Security did not clarify whether he was hit by a bullet.
“At this time, the incident appears to be isolated, and there is no known current threat to the public,” said FBI spokesperson Cameron Polan in San Francisco.
Video from the scene appeared to show a U-Haul truck attempting to back into the base.
“U-Haul is assisting law enforcement to meet any investigative needs they have,” company spokesperson Jeff Lockridge said in a statement.
Earlier Thursday, protesters had gathered near the island where the base is located, holding signs that read “Protect our neighbors” and “No ICE or troops in the Bay,” in opposition to federal immigration enforcement.
The protest came just hours after President Donald Trump called off a planned surge of federal agents into San Francisco to address crime. Mayor Daniel Lurie and Governor Gavin Newsom said the move was unnecessary, citing declining crime rates.
Meanwhile, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents had begun arriving at the Coast Guard base for a potential ramp-up of immigration enforcement — a move that sparked protests from several hundred demonstrators.
Trump said he decided to pull back after conversations with the mayor and several prominent business leaders who assured him that local efforts were underway to “clean up the city.”
The confrontation in Alameda came as Trump’s other federal deployments faced legal challenges across the country. Courts in Washington, D.C., and West Virginia reviewed cases related to National Guard troop deployments, while a federal judge in Oregon weighed whether to allow troop activity in Portland. Deployment remained blocked in the Chicago area.
Coast Guard Island, a 67-acre man-made island created in 1913, sits in the Oakland Estuary between Oakland and Alameda. The federally owned facility has housed Base Alameda since 2012 and provides a range of support services for Coast Guard operations along the West Coast. Public access to the base is restricted.
