Police say a long investigation turned a neighborhood mystery into an attempted homicide and arson case.

PLUM, Pa. — A western Pennsylvania man has been charged nearly four years after investigators said he caused a natural gas explosion that destroyed his family’s home, injured all five people inside and left one child with burns in a case that stunned a neighborhood east of Pittsburgh.

Jacob Rabb, 41, was charged in March with attempted criminal homicide, aggravated arson and related counts in the April 22, 2022, explosion on Hialeah Drive. The case matters now because police say the blast was not a utility failure or an unexplained accident but an intentional act carried out while Rabb, Laura Petty and their three sons were inside. The charges also turned years of rumor and uncertainty into a criminal case with specific allegations, physical evidence and a court path ahead.

The explosion happened late at night in the Holiday Park section of Plum. Investigators said Rabb, Petty and their sons, then 11, 6 and 2, were inside the house when it blew apart. The two younger boys got out with their parents, while the oldest child escaped from the basement through a window after he had been playing video games there. He suffered first-degree burns. In the first public accounts after the blast, Petty described waking up with the roof down around her and credited Rabb with helping the family get out. “If it wasn’t for Jake, we wouldn’t have made it out,” she said at the time, reflecting the confusion and trauma in the immediate aftermath before investigators later built their case.

Police now say the cause was deliberate. According to the criminal complaint, investigators used Peoples Gas data that showed unusually high gas consumption at the home on three different days during the month of the explosion. Authorities alleged Rabb manually disconnected the gas supply to the dryer on three occasions, including the day of the blast, allowing gas vapors to build inside the house until they were likely ignited by a nearby furnace. The complaint said a deputy fire marshal concluded the fire was caused by natural gas vapors released through manual manipulation of a gas line. Police also said Rabb’s father told them his son admitted causing the explosion. Rabb denied telling Petty he was responsible, according to published reports, and the criminal case will test those claims in court.

The charges landed in a community already sensitive to deadly blasts. Plum has seen other serious house explosions over the years, including one in the same broader neighborhood in 2008 and a far deadlier blast elsewhere in the borough in 2023. The Hialeah Drive explosion in 2022 destroyed the family’s house and damaged nearby property, but all five family members survived. For neighbors, the lack of a public explanation stretched on for months and then years. County emergency officials had said the investigation was lengthy because it involved forensic testing of gas lines and appliances as well as follow-up interviews, a reminder of how slowly fire cases can move when the scene is devastated and the evidence must be reconstructed piece by piece.

Another major turn came after the fire. Petty later separated from Rabb and filed a Protection from Abuse order in May 2023, according to the complaint. Police said she told them she found two handwritten notes in a kitchen cabinet. One said in part, “If I can’t have her no one will or my kids…” The other said, “P.S. I did blow up the house.” Investigators also said Rabb later violated the protection order and threatened Petty with a knife. Those later events helped shift the story from a baffling house fire to a broader domestic violence and attempted homicide case, giving investigators motive evidence they said matched the physical findings from the home.

Neighbors said the new allegations changed how they look back on the night of the blast. Akil Washington, who lives a few houses away, said he ran toward the burning property to help the family escape. “We could hear the young lady hollering and screaming,” Washington said. “We ended up trying to rip that fence down to help her get out. So, we were right in the flames.” He called the filing of charges “unbelievable.” By the time of the arrest, the house itself was gone and the property had become a vacant lot, an empty space where a family home once stood and where one of the borough’s longest unanswered questions began.

Rabb was arraigned in March and held without bail. At the charging stage, a preliminary hearing had been scheduled for March 18. The case now stands as a criminal prosecution built on gas data, fire analysis, handwritten notes and witness accounts, with later court proceedings expected to determine whether prosecutors can carry those allegations into trial.

Author note: Last updated April 6, 2026.