Crystal Brown, a U-Md. spokeswoman, said the warning was sent as a “precautionary message,” and that there were no reports of shots fired. There is no ongoing threat to campus, Brown said. The university quickly issued an “all clear.”

U-Md. police Maj. Marc Limansky said the individual is a Marine Corps non-commissioned officer with the U.S. Navy ROTC, and he was dressed in plain clothes and transporting a replica rifle to a vehicle in the parking lot next to the coliseum. The coliseum is located directly across the street from Reckord Armory, the headquarters for the Navy ROTC unit on campus. Limansky said that students observed what they believed was a suspicious person with a weapon and called police.

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“It shows our students were being observant and doing the right thing,” he said.

In a statement, Limansky noted that the university’s chief of police met with ROTC command staff to “ensure this type of incident does not happen in the future.”

U.S. Navy spokesman Lt. Sean Brophy said that it is Navy ROTC policy that training weapons be kept in a case when transported outdoors.

“Naval ROTC authorities are working closely with University of Maryland authorities to investigate this more closely,” Brophy said.

A similar incident happened last month at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., where members of the Army ROTC unit taking part in a drill were mistaken for possible active shooters. The false alarm at GMU — at at several other campuses in recent years — led the Army general in charge of cadet training for ROTC to significantly reform procedures for handling the replica weapons on college campuses. The commander of the ROTC battalion at GMU also called for all of the rifles to be clearly marked with orange tape to ensure that they would not be mistaken for actual weapons.