Naked Man Arrested After SWAT Standoff at Mahwah Condo, Police Say

A man who police say has a history of mental illness was taken into custody Tuesday afternoon after an hours-long standoff with cops and the county SWAT Team at his parent's Mahwah condo, Mahwah Police Chief Jim Batelli said in a release Tuesday evening.

According to Batelli, the man was escorted out of the Society Hill condo on Juniper Way wearing only a bed sheet at about 3:30 p.m. Tuesday.

Cops said they responded to the unit at about 8:30 a.m., after neighbors reported a gas masked tacked to the man's front door. Cops also found a chemical engineering degree, a plastic bag filled with bullets and a flash suppressor rifle attachment, and a note that warned not to come in because “chemo bio fire cannot be subdued,” attached to the outside of the front door, Batelli said. 

After a six-hour standoff during which the man barricaded himself in the home, police said he was found in a neighboring condo unit after seemingly climbing through an attic and lowering himself into the unit, Batelli said. Police found him sitting naked in the home's living room, the he said.

During the standoff, Batelli said police tried to contact the man through the door, via cell phone, house phone, and bull horn, but they were unsuccessful.

The Bergen County SWAT Team, bomb squad, and HazMat crew responded to the scene, and attempted using a bomb robot to locate the man within the condo, and pepper spray to get him out, Batelli said. The man had moved furniture in the unit blocking the robot, and did not come out after pepper spray was used, he said.

After the SWAT Team entered the unit, they found a hole cut in the attic’s sheetrock and followed it to find the man in the adjacent condo unit, the police chief said. 

The man was identified as Maksim Burakhovich, who Batelli said suffers from “emotiona[l] issues” and who was prescribed medication that he had stopped taking.

Burakhovich was transported to Bergen Regional Medical Center for evaluation, and charges against him are pending, police said.