House Erupts in Massive Explosion as Police Serve Search Warrant
An hours-long standoff in Arlington, Virginia, ended Monday night with a thunderous explosion that destroyed a house in which a suspect had defied police commands to emerge.
The explosion in the Washington suburb took place just before 8:30 p.m. Police had been outside the home since about 4:45 p.m., armed with a search warrant for the home because the individual inside had been shooting a flare gun in the neighborhood.
When police originally approached the home to serve the warrant, they were met by gunfire from inside, said Ashley Savage, the public information officer with Arlington County Police Department, according to ABC.
Savage indicated that police did not fire at the house.
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“During the early parts of it, after we had obtained a search warrant, we were attempting to make contact with the individual. Our SWAT team was on scene at that point, we would determine that the incident would be a barricade because the suspect had not exited the residence,” Savage said.
“We were attempting to make contact with the individual when shots were discharged inside the residence,” she said.
A police statement said someone inside the duplex “discharged a flare gun approximately 30 – 40 times from inside his residence into the surrounding neighborhood.”
Police said they believe only one person was in the structure at the time of the explosion. Police have not released the individual’s name.
“I was in the back of my house, and I had been hearing prior to this, some sort of firecracker sorts of sounds, and then suddenly there’s a loud boom, and my entire house is shaking,” neighbor Ann-Elise Quinn said, according to WRC-TV. “All the lights went off immediately.”
Quinn said she saw flares being fired earlier in the day and said she believed someone was “goofing off on an afternoon.”
Arlington house explodes as police attempts to serve search warrant https://t.co/BPXB2nGZBk
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“But then after about 20 of them, I start to think, ‘This is concerning. Maybe somebody should call the police,'” she said. “There was a police unit that was going down the street and then took a turn around the corner down to the cul-de-sac where he was, and it looked like they gave him a talking to.”
Carla Rodriguez of South Arlington made the two-mile drive from her to see what had taken place.
“I actually thought a plane exploded,” she said, according to The Associated Press.
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A neighbor who witnessed the explosion said before the blast she heard a voice from the house calling “let me go,” according to The Washington Post.
The neighbor, whose name was not used, said her house was littered with broken glass after the blast.
“It took me like an hour to stop quivering,” she said.
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