PROVO, Utah, March 27, 2017 (Gephardt Daily) — A suspicious item left near the Provo Police and Fire Dispatch Center on Saturday turned out to be the belongings of a transient woman that she was storing out of the rain.
A news release from the Provo Police Department stated that a man was seen on security cameras at about 2:40 p.m. placing a case near the door to the dispatch center.
Police evacuated the building and the Orem Police Department temporarily took over dispatching duties.
A remote-controlled robot and scanning device was employed by bomb disposal officers to examine and remove the case, which was then transported out of the city in a “blast containment vessel.”
A follow up news release revealed off-site examination helped investigators determine the items in the case were not an explosive device, but a collection of materials belonging to a transient woman who used the covered stairwell to store her property out of the elements.
“The examination of the suspicious case revealed the following: batteries, wires, two-way radios, road flares and other items that appeared under X-ray examination like a possible explosive device,” the news release said.
Center Street was blocked for about two hours, according to the news release.
Officials said no threat was communicated to the police department.
