A suburban Virginia neighborhood was rattled by the fiery explosion of a house after officers were sent to the area on Monday night to execute a search warrant, the Arlington County Police Department said.
Officers were called to the scene at around 4:45 p.m. following a report of possible shots heard, police said. After an hourslong standoff at the property, an explosion occurred at around 8:25 p.m., with dramatic video footage appearing to show the house being completely blown apart.
Prior to the blast, police said that preliminary investigations had indicated that the suspect “discharged a flare gun approximately 30 - 40 times from inside his residence into the surrounding neighborhood.” No property damage or injuries were reported in connection with the flare shots, authorities said.
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The suspect then allegedly barricaded themselves inside the the property and ignored law enforcement attempts to establish a line of communication via telephone and loudspeakers. Police say that as officers attempted to execute a search warrant, the suspect “discharged several rounds, from what is believed to be a firearm” from inside the home. The house subsequently exploded.
The Associated Press reported that a “massive boom” could be heard in the area and that power subsequently cut out in the surrounding area. The explosion occurred in Bluemont, a northern Arlington suburb where, according to the wire, many of the homes are duplexes housing two families.
“The investigation into the circumstances of the explosion are ongoing,” the police department said.
Ashley Savage, spokeswoman for the Arlington County Police Department, told The New York Times that officers hadn’t made it into the property when the suspect opened fire and the house exploded. “We have not been able to access the home at this point, so I don’t have the status of the suspect,” Savage said, adding that the man was “believed to be inside the residence at the time of the explosion.”
Neighbor Alex Wilson told ARLnow that the suspect used a rifle to target police as they attempted to use a SWAT vehicle to enter the property. “When they rammed the front door he started firing an AR back at them,” Wilson said, adding that he saw at least one officer injured after the explosion.
While police have not yet released any information about the suspect, public records list a man named James Yoo as the resident of the address to which police were dispatched, according to ARLnow. Yoo allegedly shared paranoid posts online, including one in recent days about his neighbors in an adjoining duplex.
Neighbor Wilson characterized Yoo as a recluse who used aluminum foil to cover his windows and allegedly used a knife to chase off prospective buyers when his property was listed for sale a couple of years ago.
Another neighbor, Annelise Quinn, told NBC4 Washington, “I was in the back of my house, and I had been hearing prior to this, some sort of firecracker sort of sounds, and then suddenly there’s a loud boom, and my entire house is shaking. All the lights went off immediately.”
The county police said that three officers reported minor injuries, and that no one had been transported to the hospital. The Arlington Fire Department said the fire was under control but that crews remained to “battle small spot fires.”
Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA), who represents the area, said he late Monday that he was monitoring the “emergency response to a major explosion in the Bluemont neighborhood of Arlington tonight.” “This is very, very scary, and my profound thanks go out to first responders working to secure the area and keep everyone safe,” Beyer posted on X.
