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Search of impounded car results a call to the bomb squad

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February 23rd, 2012 by Ric Hanson

A Crime Scene Technician with the Pottawattamie County Sheriff’s Office received a bit of a scare Wednesday afternoon, while she was conducting a crime scene processing and inventory of a recovered stolen vehicle parked at the County and City of Council Bluff’s impound lot on South 15th Street in Council Bluffs. Sheriff Jeff Danker says the unidentified woman discovered a round cylinder in the vehicle which she thought, was a red fire extinguisher. He says as she was pulling the object out of the vehicle, she discovered there were wires attached and a digital timer. Bomb squad experts from the sheriff’s office and Council Bluffs P-D used a “disruptor”-type round to blow the device open. At that point, Danker says they were pretty sure it was not an explosive, but did give the appearance of a bomb.

He says the first disrupter round didn’t give them a good enough look at the inside of the device, so a rope was attached to it. The device was pulled out of the vehicle and a second disruptor round was fired to open it up a little bit more. That’s when they knew it definitely was not a bomb. The bomb squad was on the scene from about 4-to 6-pm, Wednesday.