People were evacuated from Beatniks Coffee Shop and Breakfast Joint after a report of potential pipe bomb in the parking lot on Monday morning.
The Chico Highway Patrol identified a potential threat and shut down the area for further investigation by the bomb squad.
“I’m sure that other people we’re looking at it and driving past it but the CHP officer looked at it and thought, ‘wait a minute this is weird. It could be a problem,'” Sgt Brian Miller of the Chico Police Department said.
Bomb squad officers inspected the potential bomb. The evaluation of the suspicious threat consisted of a process in which water is blasted towards the device to see if it detonates. The bomb squad cautiously performed this procedure and confirmed that the pipe was not a bomb.
The area was closed down for an estimated hour and a half and reopened as soon the identified threat was destroyed.
“The bomb squads are gone and they made sure the device was safe. They blew it apart and it was not a bomb, thankfully,” Sgt Miller said.
Jacqueline Morales can be reached at [email protected] or @lovejackshawty on Twitter.