SWAT officers swooped into Long Beach’s Washington neighborhood Tuesday evening where they thought a suspect was barricaded in a home, but after an hours-long standoff, they determined nobody was inside, according to authorities.

The situation started around 3:50 p.m. when police got reports about a person with a knife who’d tried to attack someone, Long Beach Police Department spokeswoman Arantxa Chavarria said.

Police suspected the attacker was still armed and inside a home on Chestnut Avenue near 17th Street, Chavarria said.

Officers tried to coax the person out of the home by making announcements on a PA system, but they called in the SWAT team when they got no response, according to police.

SWAT officers eventually went inside at around 8:30 p.m. and discovered the suspect was gone, Chavarria said.

Police declined to provide a suspect description or any further details about the incident.

Jeremiah Dobruck is executive editor of the Long Beach Post where he oversees all day-to-day newsroom operations. In his time working as a journalist in Long Beach, he’s won numerous awards for his investigative reporting and editing. Before coming to the Post in 2018, he wrote for publications including the Press-Telegram, Orange County Register and Los Angeles Times. Reach him at [email protected] or @jeremiahdobruck on Twitter.