By Mara H. Gottfried
The St. Paul Pioneer Press
ST. PAUL, Minn. — A “suspicious-looking package” that was brought to the front of the St. Paul fire department headquarters this afternoon was not explosive, police said.
The police bomb squad determined it was three wax candles wrapped in stretch pants, said Andy Skoogman, police spokesman.
A St. Paul Parks and Recreation maintenance worker found the package in Crosby Farm Park while doing flood clean-up work, said department spokesman Brad Meyer.
After the discovery a little after 1 p.m., workers put the package in a Parks and Recreation pick-up truck and brought it about one mile to fire headquarters at West Seventh Street and Randolph Avenue, said Fire Marshal Steve Zaccard.
About a dozen employees were at fire headquarters at the time, and it was evacuated while the package was investigated, Zaccard said. The bomb squad removed the package from the scene about 2:10 p.m.
The parks department comes across a lot of debris during flood clean up and they’re often “very strange items,” Meyer said. Most of the time, “if we think it’s suspicious, we’ll immediately contact the authorities.”
In this case, “initially, it was more strange than suspicious,” Meyer said, adding that “longer pieces of plastic” could be seen wrapped in the pants and they thought it was best to get the fire department involved before prodding it too much.
When the worker brought the items to a supervisor, it didn’t appear to be an immediate threat and was thought to be safe to transport, Meyer said. The supervisor and another worker were the ones who took the items to the fire department.
Parks and Recreation will conduct an internal review to determine whether “proper processes were followed,” Meyer said.
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