CV NEWS FEED // A house in northern Virginia exploded as responding law enforcement attempted to enter inside.
The police had a warrant to search the house’s premises. According to NBC News, they were reportedly investigating an individual there who allegedly fired a flare gun “dozens of times.”
A 22-second video of the explosion was posted to X (formerly Twitter) at 9pm Monday night, just over a half-hour after the incident was said to have taken place. As of early Tuesday afternoon, the video had been viewed over 40 million times.
The man who reportedly filmed the viral video said in an interview with FOX 5 that the suspect in the house was firing a “high caliber weapon” when the police arrived. “It was not a flare,” the witness said. “They shot flares at the beginning. He was not shooting flares near the end.”
Law enforcement “kept returning fire with non-lethal weapons,” the witness continued. “At that point [the police] reversed the truck back and kept trying to yell to [the suspect].”
“[The suspect] sounded like he was trying to say something back, but [the police] were like, ‘Look, we can’t hear you. Please come out. Please come out,’” he recounted. “At that point [the police] reversed back and they changed the angle of the truck… they were driving forward toward the window and that’s when the whole place went up.”
According to NBC’s Phil Helsel, the blast was so intense that “neighbors said [it] could be heard and felt for miles around in the Washington, D.C., suburb.”
Per the Associated Press (AP) and police spokeswoman Ashley Savage, all officers “escaped serious injury.” It was “unclear what happened to the suspect who was inside the home when it was leveled by the explosion.”
Helsel reported that the fire was “under control” in just over two hours.
Savage noted Monday night that while no deaths had yet been confirmed, the suspect was inside the house during the explosion. She further noted that the suspect was, to the police’s knowledge, the only person in the house at the time.
“Police said they are unsure what caused the explosion and are still investigating,” added the BBC. “The suspect has yet to be formally identified by police.”
