The suspect.
Posted on 08/26/2007 4:03:40 AM PDT by driftdiver
NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Two people who sprinkled flour in a parking lot to mark a trail for their offbeat running club inadvertently caused a bioterrorism scare and now face a felony charge.
The sprinkled powder forced hundreds to evacuate an IKEA furniture store Thursday.
New Haven ophthalmologist Daniel Salchow, 36, and his sister, Dorothee, 31, who is visiting from Hamburg, Germany, were both charged with first-degree breach of peace, a felony.
The siblings set off the scare while organizing a run for a local chapter of the Hash House Harriers, a worldwide group that bills itself as a "drinking club with a running problem."
......
Daniel Salchow biked back to IKEA when he heard there was a problem and told officers the powder was just harmless flour, which he said he and his sister have sprinkled everywhere from New York to California without incident.
....
Mayoral spokeswoman Jessica Mayorga said the city plans to seek restitution from the Salchows, who are due in court Sept. 14.
"You see powder connected by arrows and chalk, you never know," she said. "It could be a terrorist, it could be something more serious. We're thankful it wasn't, but there were a lot of resources that went into figuring that out."
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
These people are complete bafoons.
this is series
Meanwhile the unsolved murder rate keeps going up as well as rapes, rampant drug use/problems but they sure have a handle on fun loving runners and parking ticket violators.
It’s in New Haven, Connecticut. There is very little doubt that the mayor and the chief of police are not Democrats.
And morons.
wasn’t Jessica Mayorga recently wrestled to the ground and assulted by her own shadow?
In other words this was a good opportunity to pound the taxpayers for more overtime and we milked the heck out of it.
Charging these people with a felony is absurd. Littering, at most.
This is like the overreaction from the Boston authorities in the Great 2007 Mooninite Scare.
The suspect.
Suspicious powder on field at Yale University
There are gangs everywhere selling drugs, murdering, raping, and robbing, and they are worried about a Doctor and his sister from Germany sprinkling flour!?
I remember working in the battlestaff at a military base not too long after 911. After we had evacuated a part of the base for the second time (and the culprit was a powdered doughnut both time), the commander said "Enough of this S#it.
Maybe if the cops in Connecticut would pay attention to keeping their thugs locked up (or if the politicians would care less about 'gun control' and more about citizen's safety), then this family wouldn't have been beaten, raped, and burned alive.
Hashers are interesting folks, and fun. But there’s no doubt using a light white powder to mark the trail was dumb-de dum-dum-DUMB! Just use chalk, for cryin’ out loud.
“Hashers are interesting folks, and fun. But there’s no doubt using a light white powder to mark the trail was dumb-de dum-dum-DUMB! Just use chalk, for cryin’ out loud.”
And whats chalk? Its powder.
I feel I should explicate a small bit.
The Hash House Harriers — the original story is correct in calling them “world-wide,” as there are chapters on every inhabited continent — are basically “hounds” who chase “rabbits.” They show up early in the morning, and wait for the first clue. They chase that clue to the next clue.
These clues lead them over hill, over dale, through brush and through brier. During these chases, they frequently stop and have a beer. Beer stands are more well-distributed than clues. Hashers may do many things some folks disapprove of, but thy never take themselves too seriously.
It’s basically beer-soaked, athletic scavenger hunt. I like the idea. And marking the trail with flour, which will harm nothing and no one, and disappear in the next rain, isn’t a bad idea. But anything involving white powder in the current climate should have given someone pause.
It's powder stuck to the road. less likely to wig people out.
It may not be rational, but it's true.
“It’s basically beer-soaked, athletic scavenger hunt. I like the idea. And marking the trail with flour, which will harm nothing and no one, and disappear in the next rain, isn’t a bad idea. But anything involving white powder in the current climate should have given someone pause.”
Granted white powder can be problematic. However in this case having it leading up to flags should give them a clue.
Perhaps ask questions about it. Break out the hazmat team?
“It’s powder stuck to the road. less likely to wig people out”
I see your point but I still feel they over reacted by an extreme amount. Using their logic the baking aisle in every supermarket would require a continuous investigation due all the spilled sugar and flour.
The really stupid thing here is that any weaponized bio-agent would look and behave NOTHING like flour. Flour particles are simply not milled small enough nor do the particles have the kind of negative charge that is needed to disperse them from one another.
If you see something that looks like flour in a pile on the floor, you can be very sure that it isn’t something designed to cause mass infections.
What WOULD look like a bio-agent, you ask? Well, silica fume, aka colloidal silica, is a good example. But, you won’t find this stuff just lying on the floor. It will extremely rapidly be picked up on the slightest waft of air and become airborne and invisible.
In short flour, powdered sugar, chalk, salt and the like when found on the ground in piles, is NOT anyone’s idea of a bio weapon. It would be a complete flop. Even in an envelope, it would be a dud.
Connecticut to institute 5 day waiting period to purchase all purpose flour. Powdered donuts also to fall under ban.
The prosecutor should be removed from his position. Pathetic.
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