WASHINGTON — A man has been arrested after the Fairfax County police said he threatened to shoot and blow up a police car, and posted threats to burn down the Virginia Governor’s Mansion and several houses of worship.
The police said that Matt Snyder, 46, of no fixed address, called the Mount Vernon District Station in the predawn hours of Jan. 2 and spoke to an officer. In a statement, the police said that the officer had so much trouble making sense of what Snyder was saying that they transferred the call to 911, thinking Snyder needed some kind of assistance.
At that point, the police said, Snyder began to “make statements about shooting and blowing up a police car with an officer inside.”
WTOP’s news partner, NBC Washington, reported that Snyder made reference to a particular police officer assigned to that station, and talked about “shooting [the officer] with armor-piercing bullets while the [officer] was ‘sitting in his cruiser’,” as well as blowing up the officer’s car with an M203 grenade launcher.”
The 911 call center reported the call back to police, who began to investigate.
NBC Washington reports that a detective called Snyder, who said the officer he’d threatened had harassed him. When the detective looked for Snyder on social media, they found a post from an account with his name on it that read, “Let’s burn down the Governors [sic] Mansion n [sic] Richmond and let’s burn down the churches and synagogues and mosques. Let us burn down the court house in Fairfax and Alexandria or in every county in Virginia.”
Snyder was arrested the following evening at the Giant grocery store in Fairfax, on Fairfax Boulevard near Jermantown Road. He was charged with threatening to bomb or damage a means of transportation.
Virginia State Police, which is charged with protecting the governor, is aware of the additional threats and but have not filed charges, said spokeswoman Corinne Geller.
Snyder is out on bond. He’s due back in court March 13.
