HOUSTON - Around 1:40 p.m. CDT, NASA employees reported that two shots were fired in the NASA Building 44 in the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. A SWAT team later reported that the gunman, an employee of NASA contractor Jacobs Engineering, had killed a male hostage as well as himself, leaving a female hostage physically unharmed.

The gunman, whose identity has not been released, entered a conference room with gun drawn and ordered all but one person out. The man barricaded himself on the second floor of the two-story building, with one male and one female hostage. The building was evacuated and police were summoned. NASA security, Houston police and a SWAT team were on the scene.

Houston news reported at 5:22 CDT that the gunman and one other person were dead. Police reported that the SWAT team heard one shot and decided to engage, but before they reached the room they heard another shot. When SWAT reached the scene, the male hostage was dead from a bullet to the chest, the gunman was dead from a bullet to the head, and the female hostage was gagged and bound to a chair with duct tape, but was otherwise unharmed.

All NASA employees had first been warned to stay in their buildings but were later told by NASA they were free to go home if their working day was over. Mission Control locked its doors during this incident, as this is a standard procedure in such situations. No NASA Mission has been affected by this incident according to NASA.

In the first press conference, police said that communication to the gunman was not yet established, but that negotiators had already tried it two times unsuccessfully.

It is currently unknown if those three people had any connection to each other and what the motive of the hostage-taking was. Also, the identity of the three people has not yet been given by police.