Bomb threat prompts evacuation
By John Joyce
Published in News on September 23, 2015 1:46 PM
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News-Argus/CASEY MOZINGO
Goldsboro police responded to a bomb threat Tuesday in the area surrounding the Wayne Memorial Drive Walgreens.
A bomb threat called in to the Goldsboro Police Department Tuesday caused a mass evacuation of the area surrounding the Walgreens at 2202 Wayne Memorial Drive.
Maj. Anthony Carmon, head of investigations, said the case will be assigned to an investigator this morning.
"We will do the usual stuff, start digging into the phone records," he said, adding that so far, no suspect has been identified.
The call came in at 10:26 a.m.
A device, the caller said, would explode in the next few minutes, Capt. Theresa Cox said.
On the police report filed later, the Walgreens employee who took the call quoted the suspect as having said, "There is a bomb in your area. Everyone needs to get out."
She immediately called police, and Capt. Cox and members of her shift responded to the scene.
"We evacuated the businesses nearby and we held traffic," she said. "We were able to conduct a sweep of the area and didn't find anything, so we were able to release the scene."
The Goldsboro Fire Department also responded and helped block traffic on Wayne Memorial Drive north of Country Day Road. Goldsboro police blocked traffic south of the McDonald's on Wayne Memorial Drive near the U.S. Highway 70 underpass.
Traffic backed up in both directions for approximately 30 minutes until the scene was cleared.
Bystander Greg Whitfield, of Seven Springs, said he was in the area to sell pumpkins out of the back of his pickup truck. He had just begun to set up in the Walgreens parking lot when police, fire and rescue vehicles began pouring into the area.
Police moved Whitfield and several other bystanders across Wayne Memorial Drive to the parking lot of the CVS opposite the Walgreens.
"An officer told us to walk on back and stay in the parking lot here," he said. "I was going to call my son, but then she told us not use our cell phones."
He said he assumed the fear was the signal from the cell phones could interfere with the explosive device.