To start off, here’s a simple question. How would you feel if some stranger entered your house out of nowhere? Terrified? Surprised? A slightly tweaked version of this question now; How would you feel if a stranger dressed up as a cartoon character, say a Pokémon, jumped over the fence and enters your house? The same with a little bit of excitement, right?
If normal people like us would feel frightened and such, imagine how the President of a powerful country would feel if something like this happened to him. Not just once, but twice in one month. Well, just such an incident happened in the US.
Fence crashing the ‘White House’ has been a rather common incident over the past few years. It has been reported that many times, people have been accused and arrested of jumping over the fence and entering the white house. Most of the white house intruders do not do it in the intention of harming the President but are usually trying to attract attention to themselves or their ideas or are intruding accidentally. One of the recent ones include a toddler who squeezed through the fence while returning to his parents.
On September 19 Omar J. Gonzalez, a war veteran from Iraq, climbed over the White House fence along Pennsylvania Avenue carrying a pocket knife. He darted across the north lawn and got inside the unlocked doors of the north portico. He is the first person to have made it into the White House through the North Portico doors. After entering the White House, he overpowered a woman Secret Services officer. He then ran through most of the main floor before he made it to the far southern end of the East Room and was tackled by a male counter-assault agent. Gonzalez was then arrested and taken to George Washington University Hospital after complaining of chest pains. The shocking part of this incident was that security services failed to stop Gonzalez. Not only was the alarm box muted, but three rings of security failed to stop him. It was found that officers on duty failed to notice him jump across the fence, the rings of security couldn’t stop him while he was making a sprint to the white house, and a security dog wasn’t unleashed as the officer was afraid it would attack the officers chasing him.
What is more shocking and hilarious is that, a few days before this incident, on the September 11, 2014 another rather funny occurrence was recorded. An unknown man wearing a ‘Pokémon’ hat and carrying a ‘Pikachu’ stuffed toy jumped over the fence of the white house and was hiding behind one of the bushes until the security team spotted him and arrested him. Yes. You read it right! Who in their right mind would’ve thought it would be a good idea to hop the fence of one of the heavily guarded houses in the world? Well, this man did!
After such back to back incidents, the White House secret service is under scrutiny for their rather poor security service. But, the head of the service has given the assurance statement, saying, “What happened is unacceptable and it will never happen again.”
As the nation calms down after these two incidents, the security service at the White House has promised to enhance their service and minimize such events in the future. A final note to this article; as exciting and hilarious as it may sound, having someone dressed up break into your apartment or dorm is a very serious and dangerous issue. So, stay safe and secure and have fun!
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