Secret Service motorcade was involved in a fatal accident Wednesday

Two Secret Service employees driving along the Suitland Parkway struck and killed a man early Wednesday morning in the vehicles the agency uses to transport Vice President Joe Biden.

Biden was not in either the armored SUV or limousine at the time of the crash.

The vehicles had just been flown back to the D.C.-area from Fort Lewis, Wash., where they had driven the vice president before and after he spoke to a crowd of troops for Veterans Day.

Sgt. David Schlosser, spokesman for the U.S. Park Police, said the crash happened at 2:27 a.m. on Wednesday in Temple Hills, Md., at the intersection of Suitland Parkway and Naylor Road. The victim, whose name was not released because his next of kin had not been notified, was pronounced dead at Prince George’s Hospital on Wednesday morning, Schlosser said.

The circumstances of the accident, such as the color of the traffic light and the speed of the vehicles, were unclear but the Park Police was investigating.

Secret Service spokesman Malcolm Wiley said the employees involved in the accident remained at the scene and administered first aid to the man until an ambulance arrived to take him to the hospital.

As is customary Secret Service policy, the armored vehicles were flown to Fort Lewis on a military aircraft for the Tuesday event. They returned to the Air Force base in Maryland on Wednesday morning and the Secret Service employees were driving west along the Suitland Parkway to return them to a secure storage facility in D.C., which Wiley declined to name.

Schlosser said Park Police investigators and a crash reconstruction team were not treating the incident any differently because the vehicles belonged to Biden’s security detail. He said the investigation would take at least a week to complete and the vehicles would remain in a secure police lot until it was finished.

The sections of the Suitland Parkway and Naylor Road where the accident took place were closed to traffic for several hours Wednesday morning while the reconstruction team investigated the accident. By 7 a.m. all lanes were open to traffic again.