A woman threatening to kill her fellow riders with a bomb on a Red Line Metro train Monday sent hundreds of riders scrambling in a chaotic mess during the height of the morning commute, leaving behind bags, shoes and phones. Some even pushed their way onto the tracks and hiked more than two miles to the next station. No explosives were found and no one was reported hurt during the ensuing scramble. Yet it was riders’ response to the perceived threat that both stopped the woman — and also began a cascade of events that tied up commuters along the Red Line for much of the morning.

Train traffic was stopped for nearly two hours at four stations on the western end of the Red Line as Metro made sure that the bags left behind didn’t contain bombs and that all the riders who fled had cleared the train system’s tracks.