Issue date: 9/13/04 Section: News

A suspicious package, suspected to be a "pipe-shaped bomb" was found in front of Shadow Canyon on Northgate Sunday morning, prompting the College Station Police Department's (CSPD) bomb technicians to be called to the scene, said CSPD Police Chief Ed Feldman.

The bomb technicians later determined the package contained no explosive materials and posed no threat.

"I sent one of my employees to clean out the trash from the planter's boxes outside, and as he was cleaning them out, he found a device," said Cory Cassel, owner of Zapatos on Northgate. "I told him to put it back, and because it looked suspicious we called the cops."

Cassel called the CSPD around 10:30 a.m., and officers arrived shortly before 11 a.m. CSPD diverted traffic from University Drive heading toward Wellborn and called in members of the CSPD Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team.

"We found a device that had several plastic tubes, and as a precautionary measure we diverted traffic and evacuated the area," Feldman said.

There were no reported injuries, and the device did not explode. Feldman told The Battalion that the device is now in the custody of CSPD and that it was being analyzed.

"We're still trying to determine what it is and attempting to disarm it," Feldman said. "We'll probably take it out into a secluded area of the county and use a water cannon to disarm it, so it poses the least threat to the public."

Feldman said no threats had been reported to the CSPD in regards to the incident and that he did not believe it was linked to terrorism.

Double Daves' Northgate Manager Joe Adair declined to comment, but he did confirm that no specific threats had been made at that establishment.

"We were just passing by, and suddenly a cop comes up to us and says 'You can't go this way,' and so we had to backtrack in order to get home," said David Jarrard, a junior accounting major and a resident of the Tradition at Northgate. "It was just cops everywhere, and traffic was an absolute mess."

Cassel said he felt the incident affected his business severely.

"We had about five customers in the restaurant at the time, and so we locked the front door, and we had them leave out the back," Cassel said. "We just lost a whole bunch of business, I mean we were shut down from 11 a.m. to 2 (p.m.), and that's the entire lunch crowd."

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