You may have seen this video by now. It was all over X last night. This took place at a duplex in Arlington, VA.

Video of the explosion. Hope everyone was out of the house#Arlington #ballston @ARLnowDOTcom @RealTimeNews10 pic.twitter.com/JSZE7LkoTD

— c “” maj (@connormaj) December 5, 2023

Here’s what led up to all of this. A neighbor called police and reported that someone in this duplex at the end of the block was firing what looked like flares from a window of the house over a nearby park.

“At approximately 4:45 p.m., police were dispatched to the 800 block of N. Burlington Street for the report of possible shots heard,” Arlington County Police Department spokeswoman Ashley Savage told ARLnow earlier. “The preliminary investigation indicates a suspect discharged a flare gun from his residence. No property damage or injuries have been reported.”

As of around 7 p.m., the incident was still ongoing.

“Police remain on scene investigating the circumstances of the incident. As the investigation is ongoing, the suspect has not been taken into custody at this time,” Savage said. “As a precaution, the Bluemont Junction trail is closed between N. George Mason Drive and N. Burlington Street.”…

Around 7:30 p.m., explosive ordnance disposal units from the fire department reported that they were responding to the scene.

Someone posted an image of one of the flares on X:

.⁦⁦@ARLnowDOTcom⁩ – Any thoughts on series of “fireballs” (flares?) just now over Fairfax Drive/66? pic.twitter.com/VK8Wf9ZDqX

— Jim Mathews 🦆🇺🇦 (@mathewsjh) December 4, 2023

The suspect inside the house refused to come out. Police obtained a search warrant and eventually brought an armored truck to the property and used it to break down the front door. That’s when things escalated with the suspect firing a rifle at the police. Police advanced again and then the entire house went up. As you can see in this image, there wasn’t much left of the house afterwards:

Certified Fire Investigators are ready and on scene to support our law enforcement partners @ArlingtonVaFD and @ArlingtonVaPD during this active fire scene. #WeAreATF #ATF pic.twitter.com/CwH0U3XPJs

— ATF Washington (@ATFWashington) December 5, 2023

The owner of the duplex was pretty quickly identified as James Yoo. Yoo lived in one half of the duplex and rented out the other half to a family. Fortunately, the family had been evacuated by the time of the explosion.

Yoo had a few social media accounts including posts on LinkedIn and a YouTube channel which mostly consisted of videos chronicling what he had posted on LinkedIn. I looked at some of this material last night before it was taken down (his LinkedIn account is gone, YouTube is still up as I write this). What I saw was the ramblings of someone with obvious mental health problems. Yoo was convinced that his neighbors, who were renting the other half of his house, were spying on him and keeping track of whatever he looked at online by filtering his wifi. He was convinced other people were part of this conspiracy against him. The postings also included some vaguely political rants which came from a leftist perspective:

The posts refer to his ex-wife as a “witch,” and anti-U.S. slogans including “#F—AMERICA” and quotes from Noam Chomsky…

In one of his most recent posts, from Dec. 1, he posted a rant about his neighbor’s “activity” and that, “This is how White people operate and have the luxury of outnumbering all other ‘races’ by almost 7 to 1 in ‘Merica.” In another post from late October, he claimed that he was being targeted with “hateful messaging” and made reference to assassination.

In February of last year, he tried to sue his ex-wife, the state of New York and more than a dozen others, alleging fraud, conspiracy to deprive him of civil rights and other charges. A federal judge dismissed the complaint with prejudice two months later, calling the lawsuit “frivolous and confused.” It was among a “string” of similar complaints that were also dismissed.

The Chomsky quote in his bio was “US is the world’s biggest TERRORIST.” So for those looking for evidence of whose side this guy was on, there you have it. 

Having looked at this myself the impression I got was that Yoo was barely coherent. The political stuff seemed like just one part of his wider conspiracy mindset in which everyone was out to get him. In other words, it didn’t appear to be politics that was driving his insanity it appeared a bit of politics had become mixed up in his deeper insanity, if that makes any sense.

Given the size of this explosion, you’d have to assume that James Woo is dead. But for some reason, authorities haven’t said that yet. Here’s what CNN is reporting today.

The suspect was inside the home when it exploded, and investigators are not aware of anyone else inside, according to Savage. It is unclear whether the suspect is still alive.

Again, hard to believe anyone could survive a blast like that. Maybe we’ll get an update later today.

The guy who shot the video above gave an interview from the scene in which he described what led up to the explosion and how he came to film it from the roof of his house nearby.