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The 400 block of West Chew Avenue in Olney was largely shut down Friday afternoon as Philadelphia and federal law enforcement officials searched a home on the block to determine if its owner had connections to at least two missing women.

Residents of the block had effectively been sealed in as caution tape and Philadelphia Police Department vehicles cordoned off the street. Some residents gathered on their porches or sidewalks as federal officials produced equipment from the back of a black, unmarked utility truck.

“I have been living here all my life,” Larry Alosi, 56, said. “It used to be a safe place, but it changed with time.”

Consisting largely of rowhouses and small businesses, the North Philadelphia neighborhood of Olney is among the city’s most diverse, with large Korean American and Latin American populations calling the area home.

The search had been ongoing for nearly a week, and came after U.S. Park Police encountered Eugene Albert Horsch, 44, acting suspiciously in a black BMW near Sixth and Market Streets on June 19, police said. Investigators recovered two firearms with obliterated serial numbers from Horsch’s vehicle, as well as cocaine, fentanyl, and marijuana — along with a baton, a cattle prod device, a switchblade, and a falsified U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration badge with Horsch’s photograph depicting a falsified name.

Officials took Horsch into custody following the stop, and charged him with illegal gun possession and drug crimes. Searches of his home began last week.

Horsch was being held Friday at Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility with bail set at $500,000.

A passerby called the West Chew Avenue residence “a house from a scary movie,” with boarded-up windows on its second and third floors. A camera on the exterior points to the street. The windows on the first floor have bars from top to bottom. Pink flowers remain on the lawn, decorated with pieces of broken glass from the door.

Neighbors on Horsch’s block said the area is a quiet one, though it occasionally has its issues. Fabin Ingram, an area resident, said he never saw anyone coming or going at the corner of West Chew near Horsch’s home, and he largely worked to avoid the intersection.

“I’m big on energy and feelings,” Ingram said. “If I get an eerie feeling, I act on it.”

One neighbor, Sid Brunson, who used to cut Horsch’s grass, described Horsch as a quiet, jittery man who “had a lot on his mind.” Brunson said that Horsch’s father, R.C. Horsch, a convicted drug manufacturer and erotic filmmaker, died in 2025, leaving a pall over the home.

“You will never see a man other than him coming or leaving the house after that,” Brunson said. “If there was visitors at the home, it was always a female, never a male.”

Another neighbor, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal, said Horsch was someone who got into disagreements with neighbors over parking and trash. He had long driven an impeccably maintained gold 1980s Lexus, and in recent years had started driving a new black BMW — and was often seen bringing women home with him, the neighbor said.

The ongoing search of Horsch’s home this week was the latest in a series of odd developments at the property, with investigators saying that several urns had been found inside the home, including one that was labeled with the name of a deceased relative. Officials also discovered a 55-gallon drum with connections to water lines leading into a hole in the ground, as well as materials to grow marijuana, though it was not immediately clear if the items in the home were connected to drug manufacturing or more violent purposes.

On Friday, law enforcement officials wearing hazmat suits were seen entering and exiting the property.

During Horsch’s arrest last week, a woman falsely identified herself using the name of a 38-year-old woman who had been reported missing in Kensington in February 2023, sources told The Inquirer. Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Vanore declined to identify the woman who had been reported missing, but reports indicate that Horsch’s father had been questioned in the 2016 disappearance of his ex-wife, Amy McHale, of South Philadelphia.

By late Friday afternoon, the investigation into Horsch’s home had not ceased, but a large FBI truck was spotted leaving the scene. Late in the day, the area had been largely left quiet, with the crime-scene tape on the home’s door serving as conspicuous evidence of the day’s events.

Staff writer Andrea Padilla contributed to this article.

A U.S. park ranger last week conducted what seemed like a routine traffic stop near Independence National Historical Park, approaching a black BMW that was parked in front of a fire hydrant and asking to speak with the driver.

But just moments into the encounter, the ranger discovered a series of alarming pieces of evidence inside the car, according to a police report obtained exclusively by The Inquirer: switchblade knives, drug materials, a cattle prod and, eventually, two loaded guns.

The car’s occupants, too, were displaying troubling behavior, the report said — a woman inside said the driver was going to hurt her. And she then produced a fake identification that included her photo, but had the name of another woman who had been missing for three years.

The episode kicked off what has since become a weeklong investigation into the car’s owner and a variety of unsettling materials police have since found in the man’s Olney rowhouse.

And the probe has only intensified in recent days, growing to include Philadelphia homicide detectives, FBI agents specializing in chemical analysis, and unsubstantiated rumors spilling across social media about corpses being found in a basement.

Officials said Friday that they had no indication that Eugene Albert Horsch, 44 — the man who owns the BMW and the home in Olney — had actually stored human remains in his house on the 400 block of West Chew Avenue. But Deputy Commissioner Frank Vanore cautioned that the investigation remained ongoing, and that law enforcement agents were examining a host of unusual evidence connected to Horsch and his home.

Horsch, in the meantime, remains jailed on gun and weapons charges that were filed after his initial encounter with the park ranger last Friday.

The police report obtained by the Inquirer, as well as the affidavit of probable cause for Horsch’s arrest, gave this account of how that episode unfolded:

Around 8 a.m. on June 19, a park ranger patrolling the area noticed Horsch’s BMW stopped on Sixth Street in a restricted area, and the ranger walked up to the car to speak with the driver.

When Horsch rolled down his window, the ranger heard a woman inside the car yell out that the man inside was going to hurt her. The ranger also noticed signs of potential drug use by the occupants of the car, including a butane lighter and tweezers, and he asked both people in the vehicle for identification.

The woman then provided an ID that had her photo but the name and other details of a woman who had been reported missing several years ago.

And when the ranger asked Horsch to step out of the car, he noticed Horsch had scissors, a switchblade knife, and a glass drug pipe. The ranger’s partner then searched the car and found more troubling signs under the floorboards: two loaded firearms.

The rangers then handcuffed Horsch and the woman, but Horsch told police the guns were not hers. He also then said he had crack cocaine in a compartment near his steering wheel.

Both Horsch and the woman — whom The Inquirer is not identifying because she has not been charged with a crime — then began hyperventilating, and were taken in separate vehicles to Jefferson Hospital.

Officers continued searching Horsch’s car and found more apparent drug materials, a baton, a cattle prod, another knife, and fake credentials that purported to identify Horsch as an agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration.

After being released from the hospital, Horsch and the woman were taken to DEA headquarters. Horsch declined to speak with investigators.

The woman, however, said she’d met Horsch a few months ago, and provided enough details about their interactions at his house that investigators applied for a search warrant.

Vanore, of the police department, said investigators were continuing to sort through a mix of guns, drugs, chemicals, and even urns they’d found inside — including during searches Friday.

The possibilities of why such materials could have been on hand include drug manufacturing, explosive production, or other activities, he said, adding: “We’re certainly going to look into the activities that went on at that house.”