| By Big Radio News staff |
Police say a customer at Janesville’s Blain’s Farm & Fleet store told store employees Tuesday evening about his bomb-making knowledge, and it sparked enough concern that police evacuated the store under what they considered to be a possible bomb threat.
Janesville police Sgt. Glen Hageman says police are limited in what they can say about the incident and an investigation of it – in part because he said police are protecting the man’s medical privacy by withholding some information.
But police and a Dane County bomb squad say they found no explosive devices Tuesday evening in the Farm & Fleet off Humes Road after authorities say a man was in the store talking about how he knows how to make pipe bombs and other weapons.
Hageman says the man had a backpack he eventually handed over to store employees, although he wouldn’t say what was inside it. That’s when store workers called police.
Hageman says a Dane County bomb squad found nothing dangerous in the man’s backpack, but the response to the possible threat prompted a full evacuation of the Farm & Fleet for a few hours Tuesday night.
It’s the third bomb- or explosive-related incident police have responded to in the last few months in or around the busy retail corridor on Janesville’s northeast side.
The incidents all drew responses by bomb squads, and one had drawn an investigation leading to a sealed search warrant by federal authorities.
In November, store employees in the inventory room at the Janesville Goodwill store reported they found a “cluster bomblet,” part of a multi-cell cluster bomb. An unknown person apparently had left the device at the thrift store among a container of other donated items.
A bomb squad called in found the device was a live bomb or part of a live bomb, and police say X-rays showed it was packed with explosive materials and metal shards.
That incident sparked an hours-long evacuation of retail stores and a supermarket located in an area several blocks around the Goodwill.
And more recently, last week, FBI agents stormed a tow-behind camper they apparently were investigating on Janesville’s northeast side. It was parked for weeks at and around a McDonald’s restaurant, several retail outlets, and a hotel off North Pontiac Drive along Janesville’s northeast-side retail corridor.
The FBI arrested a 30-year-old Janesville man on suspicion he illegally built destructive devices inside the camper. According to a federal criminal complaint filed last week, the trailer contained several explosive devices the man is alleged to have made, along with multiple buckets of modified black powder, according to a criminal complaint.
Police said Wednesday that none of these incidents are thought to be related.