ST. CLAIRSVILLE — A Tiltonsville man is being held at the Belmont County Jail following a major mobilization of multiple law enforcement agencies in Belmont and Jefferson counties Tuesday.

According to Chief Deputy James Zusack of the Belmont County Sheriff’s Office, officers took Frank Andrew Yopa, 31, into custody. He is being held without bond pending arraignment for inducing panic and aggravated menacing. Zusack said officers executed a search warrant at 200 Grandview Ave. in Tiltonsville after receiving a “viable threat-to-life tip.”

In executing the search warrant, detectives seized numerous AR-style weapons, pistols, bolt-action rifles, shotguns, body armor, gas masks and stockpiles of ammunition.

“He had a pretty good arsenal,” Zusack said.

He said Yopa was creating Snapchat videos allegedly making “disturbing” threats against elected officials in Belmont County, as well as law enforcement officers. Zusack did not provide names of those threatened.

“Once we viewed a couple of those videos, we turned them over to our detectives who did a tremendous job in expediting, putting a report together, to going to the prosecutor’s office and them working with us to get a warrant for this individual, a search warrant. We found the individual was living in Tiltonsville, so we contacted the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office,” he said. “Our team went down with their team. We went to the house and arrested this individual without incident. It was a team effort.

“I found this guy to be very dangerous, that’s why I wanted to expedite this,” Zusack continued. “After watching the videos, I knew this was a serious thing and it needed to be done, the sooner the better.”

Zusack said he was made aware of the situation Tuesday when Yorkville police showed his office the videos.

“This told us that he was prepared for something or preparing for something, in a sense. The threats along with what he had in the house, that was a scare to us,” he said. “I just appreciate everybody’s hard work on this, especially our guys and Jefferson County, to get this guy off the street for now.”

He said Yopa gave no specific date or timeline to carry out the threats.

“Basically toward law enforcement, he said basically he was ready for us. If we would come, he was not going to go without a fight. That showed us that we needed our special teams to go down there and take care of the situation,” he said.

Zusack said threats to anyone will not be tolerated.

“We act on this stuff fast. You have to nowadays, because we have so many active shooters. This happens over and over and over again, and we don’t want it to happen in Belmont or Jefferson County,” he said.

He said Yopa has no prior history with Belmont County officials or police, and it is unclear what his motive was.

“He has never been in jail,” Zusack said. “He was in the military, but he ran into some trouble there and got kicked out. He knows what he’s doing.”

Zusack said he does not expect any additional arrests in the case at this time. He does not believe the weapons seized were illegally obtained.

He said questions about bond, whether Yopa would be released and under what circumstances would be answered in the courts.

Zusack said Yopa may appear later this week to be arraigned in Belmont County Western Division Court.

According to Belmont County court records, Yopa will be evaluated by Coleman Professional Services, which will file a mental health report with the court indicating if its staff believes he is a threat to himself or others. The bond hearing will be set once the court receives this report.