The Supreme Court, a House office building and the Library of Congress were evacuated Thursday after a North Carolina man said he had a bomb in his truck parked outside the library, according to law enforcement officials.
Washington police asked residents on several streets on Capitol Hill to evacuate their homes, and the Republican National Committee evacuated its offices nearby.
The man who made the threat, 49-year-old Floyd Ray Roseberry, posted several videos online from his truck, according to multiple senior law enforcement officials who spoke with NBC News. Roseberry’s last known address is Grover, North Carolina.
“My negotiators are hard at work trying to have a peaceful resolution to this incident,” U.S. Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger told reporters at a briefing.
Manger said the man drove a black pickup truck onto the sidewalk in front of the Library of Congress at about 9:15 a.m.
When Capitol Police responded to a call about the truck, “The driver of the truck told the responding officer on the scene that he had a bomb and what appeared, the officer said, appeared to be a detonator in the man’s hand,” Manger said.
“So we immediately evacuated the nearby buildings,” Manger said.
A pickup truck is parked on the sidewalk in front of the Library of Congress’ Thomas Jefferson Building, as seen from a window of the U.S. Capitol, Thursday, Aug. 19, 2021, in Washington.
Alex Brandon | AP
The man has been making anti-government statements, according to law enforcement officials who spoke with NBC News.
Manger said the man was making statements on a livestreamed video.
A Facebook livestream appears to show the man in his truck outside the Library of Congress.
Facebook removed the stream about 90 minutes after the video was recorded, a company spokesman said.
Officials said the man claimed to have a propane tank inside the cab of the truck.
Two law enforcement officials told NBC that the driver is communicating with authorities by writing on a dry-erase board that he had in the vehicle.
Bomb technicians from the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives were at the scene, in addition to FBI negotiators.
People at the Cannon House Office Building received an alert telling them to leave that building and relocate to the Longworth House Office Building.
People are evacuated from the James Madison Memorial Building, a Library of Congress building, in Washington on Thursday, Aug. 19, 2021, as law enforcement investigate a report of a pickup truck containing an explosive device near the U.S. Capitol.
Alex Brandon | AP
Congress is currently in recess. The Supreme Court also is not in session.
The White House was monitoring the situation, and getting updates from law enforcement.
Subways were bypassing the Capitol South station because of the investigation, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority said.
– Additional reporting by CNBC’s Brian Schwartz
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