Bomb technicians from the State Fire Marshal?s Office who investigated the first report of a suspected bomb this year in Carroll County found only a T-shaped metal pipe.
“State police called our bomb technicians, who determined that it was not an explosive device,” Deputy State Fire Marshal W. Faron Taylor said Monday.
“There were no injuries, no evacuations and it wasn?t a hoax, so no crime was committed.”
Maryland State Police received a call at 9:45 a.m. Saturday from a resident at Gaither Manor Apartments on Gaither Manor Drive in Sykesville.
The resident told police that he had spotted a suspicious device near the apartment complex?s mailboxes, state police Detective Sgt. Charles Moore said Monday.
The last time state police in Carroll County called in the bomb squad was in August, when someone plugged mailboxes in Woodbine with fireworks, Moore said.
Crystal Brown, who lives in the apartment with her husband, Christopher, and 2-year-old daughter, Skye, said she was about to leave her home to visit her grandmother in the hospital when she saw police and yellow caution tape outside.
Neighbors told her that authorities instructed them to stayinside, which she did for an hour. Brown said she didn?t mind the wait.
“I?d rather be inconvenienced for nothing than be convenienced and blown up,” Brown said Monday.
For bomb technicians to investigate a scene that actually produces an explosive device is rare, Taylor said, “but not rare for people to see something that they believe is suspicious.”
Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, “folks have a heightened sense of awareness and pay much more attention” to suspicious objects, he said.
Police say this month, especially as the Fourth of July approaches, is the beginning of the summertime spike of fireworks-related pranks and injuries.
