Several buildings in New Haven, including City Hall, were evacuated Friday morning after someone threw several gas canisters into bushes and onto the street before leaving the area.
According to New Haven Mayor Justin Elicker, police received a report of suspicious activity on Orange Street, outside City Hall, around 7:30 a.m. and immediately set up a perimeter.
Elicker said an unknown person with a backpack approached the area, grabbed three canisters and threw them into the bushes and toward buildings. The person then left the area.
“As you can imagine, with this type of activity we wanted to be very cautious because of the possibility that it involved an explosive device,” Elicker told reporters.
According to Elicker, emergency crews sealed off the area and evacuated multiple buildings, while the New Haven Police Department Bomb Squad was on the scene. Elicker said police used robots to X-ray the canisters and planned to conduct controlled detonations on each of them in an isolated area.
The first controlled detonation, he said, “went smoothly.”
“In today’s world, unfortunately, we really have to worry about these kinds of things,” Elicker said. “And we want to make sure that everybody is safe, and so we’re taking a pretty significant measure to make sure that people are safe.”
According to New Haven Fire Department Chief John Alston Jr., the bomb squad was unable to determine the chemical composition of the cartridge despite X-raying the cartridge.
“So it’s hard to say what kind of spread or destruction might occur if they were detonated,” Alston said.
“We don’t know if they were explosive at all,” Elicker said. “It could have been someone just acting strangely.”
According to Alston, police had the lead on the site where the buses were abandoned because the area was considered a potential crime scene.
Elicker said authorities were working Friday to identify the person who left the canisters. He said police would review surveillance footage from the area in an attempt to identify a suspect.
