More than two weeks after a house in Bethesda, Maryland, caught fire and a man was found dead inside, explosives teams conducted extensive searches of the property on Tuesday and found mysterious tunnels under the yard.
Explosives teams and bomb technicians spent hours Tuesday combing through evidence on a property on the 5200 block of Danbury Road, where a man was found dead on Sept. 10.
The man's cause of death is still under investigation, and his name has not been released.
"This has been an incredibly complicated fire scene for our investigations," Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service Battalion Chief Daniel Ogren said as teams searched for clues about what happened and how the man died.
Investigators collected and tested chemicals they found stored on the property, which is about a mile northwest of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. They found electrical wiring and hoarding conditions. A piece of heavy earth-moving equipment sat in the backyard.
The resident -- who was not the man who died -- did "excavation" of the property, Montgomery County police department spokesman Paul Starks said.
Officials declined to immediately provide additional details about why the tunnels might have been dug.
Local
Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia local news, events and information
First-responders received a call about the fire about 4 p.m. Sept. 10.
The resident was able to escape and yell for help.
But a man was trapped in the basement.
The resident suffered minor injuries and was taken to a hospital. The man in the basement was pronounced dead.
The investigation is ongoing.
Neighbors said they want answers.
"I want to know whether there was anything wrong with the house itself or whether it was a gas line or whether there was something strange going on there -- and we just don't know," one neighbor said.
Stay with News4 for more details on this developing story.
