Three teen boys were attempting to play a prank on their cousins, police said.
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A horrific prank among family members. That’s what police said happened to an Alexandria family that was terrorized by three masked people threatening to break in.
(Editor’s note: The above video was first published on Oct. 15, 2025)
The frightening surveillance video, shared with WUSA9, showed the people fully covered in Halloween masks banging on the home’s door along South Iris Street.
Two weeks after the chilling incident and an investigation that spanned 100 hours of work, police have revealed that the trio were cousins of the family who had driven in from Fairfax County to scare them.
Days after the first press conference, after receiving tips, police contacted a woman who confessed that she, her two sons, her nephew, two other adults, and another child were responsible for the prank. Alexandria Police Chief Tarrick McGuire said she waited in the car while the three teenage boys wore the masks and approached the home. The two other adults and the child were nearby, some filming on a cellphone and some sitting in a second car. The boys seen in the video are all between 14 and 16 years old.
The family will not press charges, so the trio will not be publicly identified, McGuire said. The commonwealth’s attorney also declined to bring charges.
“While this incident may not result in a criminal prosecution, for me, my team, and for this community, it represents a moral failure,” McGuire said. “A moral failure where consequences could result in deadly consequences. I want to specify this because we have saw this type behavior around the country, where people have done pranks and they have resulted in people being seriously injured or losing their lives.”
Shayla, the woman inside the home who called 911, initially called her brother. Shayla was visiting her mother at the house during the incident. Her brother then came to the house with a gun, McGuire said.
“Absolutely, it could have resulted deadly,” McGuire said.
McGuire made it very clear that neither Shayla nor anyone else in her immediate family knew the relatives were coming. Shayla said it wasn’t a prank to them at all.
“It’s not even a joke gone wrong,” Shayla told WUSA9’s Katie Lusso. “They tried to enter into the home. My heart dropped when they said they were gonna take a chair and break down the door.”
It’s not clear what the motive was aside from it being intended as a prank, McGuire said. It’s also not clear why they didn’t come forward themselves after police began investigating.
Meanwhile, neighbors said the incident left a community unsettled.
“I can understand family doing that to somebody as a joke, but not the way that this one was,” neighbor Joan McGrath told WUSA9. “Of all the time that went into this, what a shame.”