Less than three hours after the Wal-Mart on U.S. 82 was evacuated for a bomb threat, all was back to normal, with the parking lot full and shoppers filling up their carts.
At around 10:30 a.m. today, someone in the store shouted in a very loud voice: “I’ve got a bomb, and I’m not afraid to use it.”
Several shoppers in the store reported that they began looking around to see whose voice it was that boomed through the aisles, but they were intercepted by store managers and employees ushering everyone to the exit doors.
The building was quickly evacuated, and employees gathered at the southeast corner of the parking lot near the Shoe Dept. store next door. Most customers jumped into their vehicles and drove off, but a few vehicles remained behind.
Greenwood police arrived in force with at least seven squad cars. A fire truck was parked on the lot as officers patrolled the lot, blocked entrances and proceeded to search the store, Chief Ray Moore said.
Officers on patrol would not answer questions from the press while the evacuation was in progress. Plainclothes officers arrived dressed in flak vests and coordinated efforts with police officers on the scene.
No explosives and no suspect were found in the store, Moore said. The man who shouted the threat had apparently left with everyone else.
“A dog went through the building to sniff it out for explosives,” Moore said the police are still viewing security videos and trying to identify the man who called out the threat.
He said that in “99.9 percent of these situations, the threat is false,” but officers are bound to complete a search, just in case.
“The ways things are in this day and time, we have to take it seriously,” Moore said. “We have to check and make sure the threat isn’t credible.”
Wal-Mart store managers have not commented.
nContact Kathryn Eastburn at 581-7235 or keastburn@gwcommonwealth.com.
