The Horse Palace in Evanston, Wyoming, closed early Wednesday night after someone repeatedly called, saying there was a bomb in the business and telling staff “there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Manager Chris Lloyd told Cowboy State Daily that a man called six times, threatening to have stashed a pipe bomb somewhere in the building, and that nobody would be able to find it.
“They said there was one on the premises and there’s nothing we can do about it,” he said. “Then he said some derogatory things, some not-so-nice language.”
Although the threats appear to have been empty, they were taken seriously.
Evanston Police Department Lt. Ken Pearson said his department responded and evacuated the Horse Palace, then cordoned off the area, including adjacent businesses.
With help from the Summit County Sheriff’s Office and its explosive-detecting K-9 officer, it was determined there was no bomb.
Out-Of-State Threat?
But that doesn’t make the threats any less concerning for staff and customers, Lloyd said.
The first call came in at 9:05 p.m., he said, “Then they just wouldn’t stop calling.”
There were “quite a few patrons” in the Horse Palace at the time, and staff tried to let them know as calmly as possible they had to evacuate, Lloyd said.
Outside, he said police and employees were able to also get views inside the business through the surveillance cameras set up inside, he said.
“I heard ‘pipe bomb’ was one of the terms (the caller) was using, and we were looking at the cameras to see if there was anything inside out of place,” he added.
While likely the threat come from out of state, that’s difficult to nail down, Pearson said.
“In today’s day and age, and everybody moving around, they keep their cellphones,” he said, which means area codes may not mean a lot in determining where a call came from. “It’s kind of a crap-shoot.”
In the case of Wednesday’s threats, “we pinged the phone” but that “didn’t narrow it down.”
But he doesn’t believe there’s any ongoing danger or threat.
That the caller didn’t say when the bomb was to go off “was the unusual part about it,” Pearson said, adding there were other signs it was an empty threat.
“There were a couple of red flags it was probably a hoax,” he said. “But I’d rather play it on the safe side.”
Greg Johnson can be reached at greg@cowboystatedaily.com.
