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Downtown Bomb Scare Was Over A 'Hoax Device,' Intentionally Made To Look Suspicious
Police evacuated the 7th Street/Metro Center station downtown over a suspicious package. (Photo by Tim Loc/LAist)
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Remember all that hullabaloo in downtown Los Angeles yesterday over a "suspicious package?" It turns out the package in question, while not actually explosive, was a "hoax device."According to Ramon Montenegro, a spokesperson for the L.A. County Sheriff's Transit Policing Division, the package was a "hoax device that was intentionally made to look like an explosive," City News Service reports. The package was spotted by a Metro employee in the 7th St./Metro Center station mezzanine Thursday afternoon at about 1:35 p.m. The sheriff's department's arson/explosive detail was called in, a 3-block area around the train station was closed off, and Metro service around the station was interrupted. At about 5 p.m., the Arson-Explosives Unit detonated the package.
Investigators are now trying to determine who put the package in the station in the first place, and Montenegro said they're using "all the resources necessary to bring someone to justice."
Last month in Boston, people were evacuated from several businesses after a similar device was found in a restaurant. That particular item was a nylon bag with a bunch of wires. We are told by the L.A. County Sheriff's Department's Transit Policing Division that for security reasons, they cannot tell us what the hoax device looked like.
Suspicious packages are pretty common, and often turn turn out to be totally harmless, like the suspicious package spotted near Mayor Eric Garcetti's house in February of 2015 that turned out to be a suitcase full of clothes.
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LAPD Officer Aereon Jefferson, however, says it's important to make sure it is actually harmless, according to the Daily News.
"Any time you get a call for a suspicious package, you get a huge response," he said. '"We want to make sure it's nothing."
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