Burke, VA – U.S. Navy officials are looking into an incident caught on video that appears to show a high-ranking Navy official pointing a gun at people during a confrontation in a northern Virginia neighborhood.
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In video obtained by CBS News, a man who appears to be Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy Karnig Ohannessian stands on a sidewalk in front of a two-story suburban home, arguing with a group of young men, telling them to leave and pointing a gun at them. Meanwhile, a woman tries to calm him, telling him to get in the house and at one point, pushing his arm down and away from the men.
Fairfax County Police spokeswoman Officer Megan Hawkins said by telephone that officers responded to reports of disorderly conduct and a man brandishing a gun on June 11 in a Burke neighborhood, but the alleged victims had left by the time they arrived. Two days later, she says a person made a report at a station and an officer went to the same block to arrest a man, but the magistrate’s office declined a warrant. Hawkins would not identify the man since the warrant was declined.
Ohannessian just shook his head when a reporter asked him outside his home Wednesday morning whether he had anything to say about the incident.
Ohannessian’s biography on the Navy’s website states that he is a principal policy adviser to the assistant secretary of the Navy for energy, installations and environment and the recipient of two Department of the Navy Meritorious Civilian Service Awards.
In a statement, Rear Adm. Dawn Cutler, Navy Chief of Information, said officials are aware of the incident and video. “Mr. Ohannessian’s supervisor is taking the appropriate action, to include working to understand the full details of what occurred.”
Neighbors said that there was a raucous party on the block that night. Timothy Keating, a retired Army officer, said he had to ask the hosts to move a car parked in front of his driveway.
“It wasn’t a nice scene for a family neighborhood,” Keating said of the party.
There was no immediate response to a message left at the county commonwealth attorney’s office.
That’s our military “intelligence.”
He apparently does not have much gun experience based on his ” teacupping” grip on the gun.