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The office of a Republican state representative in Washington was targeted by an arsonist on Monday morning as political tensions in the United States continue to intensify leading up to the fall midterms.
“Last night 2 individuals broke a window and threw a lit flare into the office of my seatmate, Rep. Andrew Barkis,” Washington State. Rep. JT Wilcox tweeted Monday along with video of the incident. “We have no information about perps or motivation, but I’m very concerned. Thank goodness the flare landed on a masonry floor.”
In the video, two people approached the front porch of the office around 4 a.m. on June 13 before one person struck a window and broke the glass.
Another individual can be seen in the video dropping a lit road flare into the office and walking away.
Both suspects are currently on the loose.
Lieutenant Paul Lower of the Olympia Police Department told Fox News Digital that the department is investigating the incident as arson and said the police “always want to pay attention” to any potentially politically motivated crime.
Lower added that another place of business was robbed of several thousand dollars worth of merchandise about a mile away by suspects matching similar descriptions as those in the video at Barkis’s office. Lower pointed out that sometimes burglars in the area “create diversionary crimes” to draw law enforcement away from specific targets.
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Barkis told Fox News Digital on Tuesday that he is skeptical of that theory considering the rise of political violence carried out by far left groups in the Pacific Northwest over the last several years.
“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,” Barkis said. “It’s a highly charged environment that we live in right now.
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Barkis added that it is well-known and easy to look up the fact that his office is located in the building, which is also where he runs his property management company and explained that leftist groups in the area have adopted violence as standard operating procedure.
“My fear is when you look at what’s happened in Olympia, Seattle, and Portland, what’s been their M.O.?” Barkis said. “The federal building, they’ve thrown incendiary devices, they’ve burned buildings, this is what has been done over the last couple of years so its no out of the ordinary.”
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The road flare incident at Barkis’s office comes after a string of violent attacks on anti-abortion locations across the country in the wake of a leaked document suggesting that Roe v. Wade is on the verge of being overturned.
One such example took place in Washington State in late May when a vandal targeted a Seattle-area crisis pregnancy center, breaking the windows and tagging it with an abortion-related threat.
Barkis, who is a vocal abortion opponent, told Fox News Digital he has “been in this business a long time” and is used to “people being upset” over certain issues, but things are being taken to a “whole new level” recently.
“Somebody throwing a lit flare through my window to bring my building down is not an angry tenant because we withheld their deposit to clean their carpet,” Barkis said. “That’s not what’s behind this. We’ll find out in the investigation.”
