(NationalUSNews.com) — In 2024, when people refer to violent crime, they usually are not referring to being attacked with swords or any other kind of medieval weaponry. However, that is just what happened when the officers from the Leesburg Police Department in Virginia went to serve a warrant on 35-year-old Alexandra C. Hopkins on Thursday, February 8. When police first encountered Hopkins, she apparently swung her sword, which was over a foot and a half long, at the officers, then fled into the residence.
An unnamed person in the area said that Hopkins had also swung the sword at them. Nobody was injured, and Hopkins was taken into custody without further incident. She is being charged with two counts of brandishing a weapon as well as one count of assault. She also had two other warrants from another agency on unrelated charges. Hopkins is being held without bond at the Loudoun County Adult Detention Center.
Strangely, Hopkins was not the only person arrested on February 8 for brandishing a sword, although the other arrest took place in Lincoln, Nebraska. The Lincoln Police were called out to a TraveLodge in Lincoln that afternoon regarding repeated trespassing by 23-year-old Grant Soderstrom. The person who called them said that she had seen Soderstrom push his way into one of the hotel rooms while carrying a sword only to then break a window and flee. She also claimed he had assaulted her the night before.
Another witness said he struggled with Soderstrom at the door while the sword-wielding man swung the weapon around and threatened to kill the witness. During the scuffle, the witness knocked the sword from Sonderstrom’s hands, who then simply picked it up and left. When confronted by police only a few blocks from the hotel, Soderstrom refused to relinquish the sword at first, but eventually he did and was arrested. He is now being charged with one count of possession of a weapon by a prohibited person as well as one count of making terroristic threats. While laws regarding swords vary by state in the U.S., they are still considered a deadly weapon.
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