Thursday evening’s lockdown of Ellsworth Drive was triggered when a private-security guard noticed a suspicious guy with a suspicious package.
The guard was monitoring a Downtown Silver Spring surveillance-camera feed and saw a man leave a large suitcase on the sidewalk along Ellsworth Drive, The Examiner reported.
The security guard watched the man return repeatedly to the suitcase to check its contents. “He actually came back and fiddled with it a bit and left it,” Pete Piringer, with MoCo Fire and Rescue, told The Examiner.
That was enough for the security guard to phone police, who then called in the bomb squad. The shopping area was evacuated around 5:00 p.m.
About 6:30 p.m., a remote-controlled bomb squad robot rolled in to examine the briefcase. Fire officials saw no signs of a bomb but detonated the briefcase anyway as a precaution, The Examiner reported.
The area was reopened around 7:00 p.m., The Examiner wrote.
“Suspicious package causes scare” (The Examiner)
Photo courtesy of Flickr user zZzz.
Updated Dec 7, 2007, at 11:53 a.m.
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I was in Panera, just around the corner, when this happened. I thought that a car had rammed into the wall or something. There was a “boom” and the windows rattled. The Panera staff knew that there was a bomb squad and that they were getting overflow customers from Macaroni Grill and Red Lobster, but somehow the message that this was a planned detonation didn’t get relayed (at least not while I was there). We were all a little freaked out. Some people standing in the order line made a beeline for the door and got the heck out of there. I didn’t know what had really happened until I saw it on the 11:00 news.
Hmmm … I’m a little surprised that Panera wasn’t evacuated, too.
Unbelievable, instead of complaining about what happened, you should be thankful that the Police and security handled the incident the way they did. I was eating in the restaurant prior to incident. I’m glad that they didn’t take it lightly. I heard so many people cracking jokes about rent cops and the police for blocking off the area because of some suspicious package. What if is wasn’t an empty package. Then what, you would complain that the police didn’t take action. Stop complaining and be thankful that we have a Great City Police department and Fire department that aren’t afraid to risk their lives for us.
Editor’s note: No one in this discussion so far has complained about the PD’s response to the incident. — JD (Dec 7, 2007)
We have a city police department?
Editor’s note: Technically speaking, we don’t even have a city — Silver Spring is an unincorporated area. It relies on the county and volunteers for its police, fire and rescue services. — JD (Dec 7, 2007)
I was walking home from the Metro on my usual route and came to the crosswalk at Discovery when I saw all the cop cars. When I overheard a police officer telling another pedestrian that there was a suspicious package, all I could think was, “great, some nimrod left their holiday shopping behind and now they’ll treat it like some terrorist threat.”
When I got home (Roeder Road) and was getting settled in, the BOOOOM shook my window. We still don’t know what it was? Maybe some poor homeless dude’s sole worldly possessions. They are everywhere in Silver Spring, and they often leave their stuff somewhere rather than carry it around on their errands.
Kudos to the security officer who notified the PD about the package. I too expected it to be an overreaction to a common package but upon hearing about the suitcase, I am thrilled that the security officer was so observant.