Explosion at duplex in Virginia’s Hampton Roads area critically injures 2, official says

By Jason Hanna and Michelle Watson, CNN

An explosion ripped apart a duplex in the southeastern Virginia city of Franklin on Friday night, critically injuring two people and spurring investigators to try to figure out what caused it, the city manager said.

The explosion was reported around 10:50 p.m. ET in a residential area of Franklin, a city of about 8,000 people in Virginia’s Hampton Roads region, City Manager Amanda Jarratt told CNN.

The blast happened in a duplex, Jarratt told CNN affiliate WTKR. One injured person was airlifted to a trauma center, and the other was taken to a different medical facility, she told CNN.

The names of the injured, information on where the two were when the explosion happened, and details about what led to the explosion weren’t immediately released.

Virginia State Police are investigating the blast, Jarratt said. Preliminarily, investigators believe that “no criminal element” was involved, she said.

Part of the duplex was torn open, leaving a jumble of brick, wood, metal and shingles, a picture sent by the city government and video from WTKR showed.

“There is some minor damage to other duplexes, but nothing significant,” Jarratt told WTKR.

The duplex, on the 600 block of Campbell Avenue, is about a half-mile down the road from the Paul D. Camp Community College’s Franklin campus.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2022 Cable News Network, Inc., a WarnerMedia Company. All rights reserved.