WASHINGTON — It's usually someone jumping over the White House fence that causes Secret Service agents patrolling the grounds to scramble.

But on Thursday night, a toddler slipping through slats in the gate caught the eyes of the gun-toting officers who are charged with protecting the president.

Secret Service spokesman Edwin Donovan said the child was returned to his parents. Neither the boy nor his parents were identified.

Donovan joked that agents were going to wait until the toddler learned to talk to question him about the incident, but says the boy instead was given a “timeout” and was returned to his parents.

It turned out to be somewhat of a challenging day for the Secret Service.

Earlier Thursday, Obama's motorcade came to a rare slow crawl and then a complete stop along a major interstate as he traveled to and from Fort Belvoir in northern Virginia to sign a veterans' health care bill.

Donovan said mechanical issues with vehicles in the motorcade caused both stops.

FRESNO, Calif. — While the flames still raced through California's Sierra Nevada last year, investigators zeroed in on a deer hunter they suspected of starting what would become the mountain range's largest fire in its recorded history.They pressed the hunter, who said at first he caused a rockslide in a remote corner of the Stanislaus National Forest that sparked the blaze, and then he blamed illegal marijuana growers, denying he even took a lighter on his hunting trip.On Thursday — nearly a year later — a grand jury returned a four-count indictment against Keith Matthew Emerald, 32, alleging he started a campfire Aug. 17, 2013, in an area where fires were prohibited, and it spread beyond his control and turned into the massive Rim Fire.The fire raged for two months across 400 square miles of land including part of Yosemite National Park, threatening thousands of structures, destroying 11 homes and costing more than $125 million to fight.Investigators focused on Emerald, who gave inconsistent and changing versions of what happened.