US police arrest man after Capitol Hill bomb threat
August 19, 2021
US police on Thursday arrested a man who kept Capitol Hill in lockdown for about five hours after claiming he had a bomb in his light-duty truck.
The 49-year-old North Carolina resident surrendered to police officers without incident outside the Capitol Hill Library after parking his vehicle on the sidewalk.
What happened?
The incident began with the Capitol Police tweeting they were in "an active bomb threat investigation" of a "suspicious vehicle near the Library of Congress."
"At about 9.15 this morning a man in a black pickup truck drove onto the sidewalk in front of the Library of Congress," Capitol Police chief J. Thomas Manger told reporters.
"The driver of the truck told the responding officer that he had a bomb and what the officer said appeared to be a detonator in the man's hand."
The Capitol police tried to find out if the truck contained an explosive device and started to communicate with the man inside it.
Manger said that his negotiators were "hard at work to try to have a peaceful resolution to this incident," adding that police were unaware of the man's potential motives.
"Shortly after we delivered the telephone, he got out of the vehicle and surrendered, and the tactical units that were close by took him into custody without incident," Manger said.
The man was livestreaming his actions online. He claimed to have asked to speak to US President Joe Biden on the phone.
Congress on recess
During the incident, US Capitol Police officers evacuated the Supreme Court and the Library of Congress which is close to the Capitol and a mile (1.6 kilometers) from the White House.
Law enforcement officers asked congressional staff working in the Cannon House Office Building to move to a different building. Dating back to 1908, the oldest congressional office building is linked by a tunnel to Capitol Hill where Congress meets.
Congress was not in session on Thursday as it is on summer recess.
Police cars blocked off the area with barricades as officers from the Washington DC Metropolitan division, FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives arrived on the scene.
jc/msh (AFP, AP, Reuters)