Posted on 05/28/2003 7:34:13 AM PDT by AAABEST
The cylinder was red, about a foot tall. Pringles, it read. Through the plastic top, a brown bottle could be seen. A beer bottle, it seemed. For more than two hours, thousands of drivers were detoured from Collier County's busiest road as authorities warned East Naples residents and business owners of a possible bomb in their midst. By 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, the two empties — the glass kind and the cardboard potato chip can variety — were blown up safely by the bomb squad.
The cylinder was red, about a foot tall. Pringles, it read.
Through the plastic top, a brown bottle could be seen. A beer bottle, it seemed.
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By 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, the two empties — the glass kind and the cardboard potato chip can variety — were blown up safely by the bomb squad.
"It was a potato chip can?" said James Johnson, the general manager of Frascati's restaurant, which was in the middle of the bomb zone. "They wouldn't tell us what it was. All this for a potato chip can?"
Under the Orange Alert terrorism mode, law enforcement agencies around the nation are taking very seriously bomb threats, suspicious devices, strange packages, and just about anything that might look, in any way, like a bomb.
The Collier County Sheriff's Office's specially trained bomb squad members checked the red can left at Naples Motorsports at 1361 Airport-Pulling Road. They decided they needed the expertise of their counterparts, the Southwest Regional Bomb Squad.
"We have to take it seriously until we know what it is," said sheriff's spokeswoman Tina Osceola after the can and its contents were found not to be a bomb.
The bomb squad blew up the can in front of the building, just feet from a silver Lamborghini inside the business, deputies said.
The normally lunchtime-clogged Airport-Pulling Road was sealed off in both directions, between Golden Gate Parkway and Radio Road between 11:15 a.m. and 1:45 p.m. Drivers were diverted to Livingston Road.
The shopping center where the can was found was emptied, with people sent about a block away out of danger.
Garret Robinson, who works as a detailer at Naples Motorsports, took a look at the can when the store manager found it when the store opened just before 11 a.m.
"He was going to open it, but he said it was heavy and it looked like something was inside it," Robinson said. "He was going to pop the lid."
Instead, he asked Robinson to take a look.
"I said no way would I open it," the 19-year-old said. "You could kinda see a circular thing inside."
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"We didn't want to take any chances," he said. "I didn't know it was going to do all this."
They called the sheriff's non-emergency number to alert them to the suspicious device outside their front door.
Within a few minutes, the workers were leaving the building, deputies were showing up to check out the possible bomb and patrol cars were blocking roads from Golden Gate Parkway and almost all points south along Airport Road. Drivers were caught in traffic tie-ups that lasted nearly an hour as they tried to navigate without driving on the major thoroughfare in East Naples.
"It may seem a little extreme how far we blocked it off, but we wanted to get traffic onto Livingston Road to keep it moving," said sheriff's spokeswoman Sheri Mausen.
Although no one was arrested for planting the Pringles and a beer bottle, there was one arrest of a driver who tried to take Airport Road amid the loud complaints of a Naples police officer.
Veteran Naples police traffic officer Sgt. Kyle Clark was at Golden Gate Parkway and Airport Road around 1:45 p.m. when Roy M. Nelson, 71, tried to head south on Airport Road. He was directed by three officers and Clark to keep heading east on Golden Gate Parkway, reports say. Instead, he drove past the officers, the traffic cones and marked police cars, shaking his head at Clark and trying to head home to River Reach.
While looking at Clark, Nelson drove his car at Clark, striking his left leg with his bumper. Clark said Nelson had been told at least seven times which way to drive his car, but didn't listen. Clark then told him to get out of the car, but he refused, reports say. Police had to use pepper spray on him to subdue him and arrest him.
Nelson of 2488 River Reach Drive, East Naples, was charged with failure to obey the lawful order of law enforcement officers and resisting arrest without violence.
Not all surrounding businesses were evacuated. Local car dealers were open. Nearby stores kept their doors opened. And traffic already in the bomb zone was still zipping around side streets.
But getting anywhere near the area took a pretty good working knowledge of the neighborhood.
For example, Amy Grega, the manager at nearby Spanky's Speakeasy, said she didn't even know the back way into the restaurant. At noontime, she was having maps drawn to get to her evening wait staff just in case the road was still blocked.
"I thought this might go on all day," she said.
She said the restaurant served 23 lunches between 11 and just before 2 p.m., when traffic was flowing again. On a normal day, she said, more than 100 lunches are served.
"I know I served seven people around noon myself," she said. "You couldn't get in here. Most people don't know the back way. I know I didn't."
At the lunch crowd-heavy Frascati's, which gave diners a nearly front row seat on the excitement, management estimated losing $2,000 in noontime meals. Only six tables had diners, maybe two or three at each, he said. The restaurant has 160 chairs, Johnson said.
"What can you do?" he said. "I thought they said they X-rayed it. I'm a little upset now that I hear that it was a potato chip can."
WAAAAAAHH!!! WAAAAAAHH!!! PLEASE KEEP ME SAFE AT ALL COSTS
DISCLAIMER: If you condone this sort of stupidity, be advised I think of you as less than cat crap.
In Naples Florida the largest threat if visiting the area is roadside trash, can bottleneck areas for hours.
A closer look at what had snarled traffic and the bomb squad had to go up against.
A-yep, a load of crap a mile wide. Gotta justify those annual budgets, you know. Turn those molehills into mountains.
Hey, if it saves just one life, eh?
It would be a bit funnier if it wasn't such a perturbing exercise in costly (and potentially harmful or dangerous) stupidity.
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