The Eugene Police Department used a robot rover to destroy a “suspicious device” outside Oregon Hall on Thursday afternoon. EPD spokeswoman Pam Alejandre said the device was designed to look like a bomb, but it wasn’t an actual explosive.
Police moved a crowd of onlookers hundreds of feet away from the building before the robot destroyed the device at 2:15 p.m., creating a “pop” sound like a small firecracker, which some people believed to be an explosion.
Department of Public Safety Lt. Joan Saylor said an Oregon Hall employee called DPS at 12:37 p.m. about a suspicious device laying in the strip of grass outside Oregon Hall between the curb and the sidewalk.
Saylor described the bomb as a tennis ball-shaped sphere wrapped in black electrical tape with a small cord coming out of it. Saylor said the shape matched that of six “ball-bombs” found by Portland police in 2000. One of those bombs killed a Portland police dog.
EPD and DPS corralled Oregon Hall and the University Health Center with yellow crime-scene tape. Saylor said people in both buildings were moved to back rooms and hallways but were not evacuated. Parts of Agate Street and 15th Avenue were also blocked off, including the entrance to the University on Franklin Boulevard. Traffic ways were completely reopened by 2:30 p.m.
EPD deployed a metallic, four-wheeled robot vehicle called a “disrupter,” which Saylor said blasted a high-pressure stream of water to destroy the object. Before the object fired, officers moved people back to the steps of Carson Hall and behind the health center.
Over a loudspeaker, an officer announced, “Fire in the hole. Fire in the hole. Take cover. Take cover,” then came the small popping sound.
Shortly after, EPD officers approached the object and began investigating it for clues. But Alejandre said the destroyed object produced no leads.
“Unless someone comes forward with some information, there’s nothing further,” she said.
Despite the afternoon ruckus, people in other parts of campus remained unaware of the bomb situation. Behind Carson Hall, a group of high school students and their parents were taking a campus tour along the same path that EPD had detoured University students trying to get through campus.