Law enforcers have detained a 49-year-old man from North Carolina after several hours of standoff following the latter’s claims that he had explosives in his truck parked near the U.S. Capitol.
The incident reportedly started around 9.15 on Thursday morning when Floyd Ray Roseberry drove a truck with no license plate up the sidewalk outside the library. He then called out to some passing students and told them to call police.
Kelsey Campbell, a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was visiting Washington on a class trip, said she and another student encountered Roseberry around 9.20 a.m. They ran away but informed police nearby who then confronted Roseberry.
“He said, ‘Hey, call the police, tell them to evacuate this street, and I’ll give you all this money,’” Campbell shared. “I said, ’No!’ and he threw the money at us and we started running.”
The driver told the responding officer that he had a bomb and that he was holding what the officer believed to be a detonator.
The authorities immediately launched “an active bomb investigation” which prompted massive evacuations after Roseberry, a long-standing supporter of former President Donald Trump, made bomb threats to officers and called for “All Democrats to step down.” The man also live-streamed his anti-government grievances on Facebook.
The authorities also tried negotiating with Roseberry by holding up handwritten signs through his driver-side window. At the same time, they reached out to his family and they found that his mother had just died. His ex-wife, Crystal Roseberry, said she’s never seen him to have explosives. Though she confirmed that he was an avid collector of firearms.
Roseberry social media accounts also offered more insights about him. One Facebook Live video showed him inside his truck while threatening explosions and expressing hostility toward President Joe Biden. He also profanely warned of a “revolution” and laid bare a series of grievances related to U.S. positions on Afghanistan, health care, and the military.
Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger said that “there were other issues he was dealing with,” though he did not reveal any other details or motive for the threat.
The police later searched the truck and said they did not find a bomb, though they did collect possible bomb-making materials, says a CNN report.
