An arsonist set fire to the office of a Republican state lawmaker in Washington on Monday morning, as political tensions in the US rise ahead of the November midterm elections.
Last night, two people shattered a glass and hurled a lighted flare into the office of my seatmate, Washington State Representative Andrew Barkis. Rep. JT Wilcox shared a video of the event on Monday.
“We have no information about perps or motivation, but I’m very concerned. Thank goodness the flare landed on a masonry floor.”
Two people approached the office’s front porch around 4 a.m. in the video. Before the 13th of June, someone smashed a window.
In the footage, another person can be seen walking away after throwing a lighted road flare into the workplace. The suspects are on the run right now.
Last night 2 individuals broke a window and threw a lit flare into the office of my seatmate, Rep. Andrew Barkis. We have no information about perps or motivation, but I'm very concerned. Thank goodness the flare landed on a masonry floor. pic.twitter.com/vRr829tCPC
— Rep. JT Wilcox (@jtwilcox111) June 13, 2022
Lieutenant Paul Lower of the Olympia Police Agency stated the department is investigating the event as arson and that any possible politically motivated crime should be investigated.
Lower went on to say that a mile away, suspects matching the descriptions in the video at Barkis’ workplace robbed another shop of many thousand dollars worth of products. Lower noted that local burglars occasionally stage diversionary crimes to divert law enforcement’s attention away from certain targets.
Given the growth of political violence carried out by far left organizations in the Pacific Northwest over the last several years, Barkis said on Tuesday that he is suspicious of that hypothesis.
“I’m not quite of the same feeling that somebody would do an arson and burn a building down to just try to rob an antique store. It’s a highly charged environment that we live in right now,” Barkis added.
Barkis went on to say that the fact that his office, which is also where he conducts his property management firm, is located in the building is well-known and easy to search up, and that leftist organizations in the region have adopted violence as routine operating practice.
Following a leaked document stating that Roe v. Wade is on the approach of being overturned, a series of violent attacks against anti-abortion venues around the country occurred.
In late May, a vandal broke the windows of a Seattle-area crisis pregnancy clinic and tacked an abortion-related threat on the building.
