Neighbors are stunned after FBI agents and SWAT team members with armored vehicles swarmed a Canoga Park home on Tuesday.
Federal agents responded to a townhome on the 21700 block of Hart Street to serve a search warrant for a male suspect.
Officers deployed flash bangs and, using loudspeakers, ordered the suspect to exit his house.
Video of the raid showed a row of vehicles carrying armed officers dressed in camo and full tactical gear, accompanied by a BearCat armored vehicle.
Residents in the area said they were terrified and stunned by the alarming commotion. A neighbor who was not identified lives in the unit next door and shares a wall with the suspect’s home.
He said he was terrified and confused when SWAT officers surrounded the townhome.
“We came out freaking out,” he said. “I was making my potatoes, bacon and eggs, and I turned around, and my mom had this scared look on her face,” he told KTLA 5 News. “I look at her, and then I heard, ‘Boom! Boom!’ so I looked outside, and I just saw a flash bang in my face. I’m all disoriented. I run upstairs, and the police are banging on the doors. I was just in fear the whole time.”
He recalls frantically telling his aunt to call 911 before realizing the commotion outside was being caused by authorities.
“I didn’t know what to do,” he said. “I was just so scared and tried to get away as fast as I could.”
A woman who also lives in the home initially believed that someone had shot her family inside their house.
“I kept thinking, ‘Oh my God, they just shot my family,” she recalled. “So we run upstairs, and I keep hearing a couple more [bangs], and I’m thinking, ‘I’m about to get shot. I’m about to die.’”
She and her family eventually stepped outside with their hands up before realizing they weren’t the targets as authorities quickly told them to go back inside.
The suspect that agents were actually searching for was their next-door neighbor, although details about what the man may have been wanted for remain unclear.
The neighbors don’t know the suspect very well but said he always seemed nice.
“We went to go ask [the authorities] why they were here, and they just told us, ‘We got a search warrant for his house,'” the neighbor said. “We’re asking them like, ‘Can we know what happened?’ We got explosives thrown into our living room! Like, we’re trying to know what’s up. We can’t even eat our breakfast in peace. The only thing I knew was fear at that moment.”
KTLA has reached out to the FBI for more information on the case and has yet to hear back.
The suspect was only described as a man in his 20s to 30s, but his identity was not released as the investigation continues.