FARGO (KFGO) – A pressure cooker left on the corner of Main Avenue and Broadway in Fargo Thursday afternoon forced police to issue a shelter-in-place order downtown because of concern that it could be a bomb.
The shelter-in-place covered an area bordered by 8th Street, NP Avenue, 4th Street, and 1st Avenue South.
Babb’s Coffee House was one of several shops on Main Avenue that were closed while the bomb squad investigated the device.
“The officers came by and told us to lock everybody in the building and lock the door,” owner Shawn Gibree said. “They wouldn’t tell us why at first, but I went out the back door and talked to one of the officers and he told me that there was a bomb threat. We moved everybody to the basement. There were [about] 20 customers in here. We hung out for an hour for it to all go down.”
(photo: Shawn Gibree)
The shelter-in-place was lifted at 1:30 p.m. after the Red River Valley Bomb Team determined the device was not explosive.
Gibree said it was surreal and scary for his customers. He said he gave all the customers free cookies and extra coffee while they waited for the incident to end.
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