Police have arrested a 19-year-old man, who reportedly attempted to blow up a service member’s SUV in the Pentagon’s parking lot on Monday.
The arrest took place at Arlington National Cemetery shortly after the incident.
The suspect, later identified as Matthew Dmitri Richardson from Arkansas, is facing federal charges.
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Eastern Virginia, Richardson told a Pentagon police officer that he was intending to blow a vehicle, along with himself, after he was spotted near the vehicle in question — a 2016 Land Rover — with a cigarette lighter in his hand.
There was allegedly a piece of cloth inserted into the car’s gas tank and Richardson was trying to set it on fire.
He started to run following the officer’s attempt to capture him and jumped over a fence into Arlington National Cemetery, surveillance camera footage revealed.
The owner of the SUV is an active duty servicemember and does not know Richardson, federal prosecutors explained.