All it took was some heated rhetoric and a forgotten backpack to raise alarm and lead to the evacuation of a state government office and adjoining North Little Rock businesses late Wednesday morning.
Although the “suspicious package” left in the Arkansas Department of Finance and Revenue office at the Indian Hills Shopping Center at 6929 JFK Blvd. amounted to little more than a homeless man’s belongings, bomb squad officials said they expect to receive more “suspicious” calls in the wake of the April 15 bombing during the Boston Marathon and other acts of terror.
“We’ll receive more calls [for suspicious items and people] just because of the media and a national awareness,” said Little Rock Fire Department spokesman Capt. Jason Weaver. “[The past few weeks are] a concern, but through training with the FBI, every run we make we stay calm … take it seriously.”
According to North Little Rock Police Department spokesman Sgt. Brian Dedrick, the package was a bag that belonged to David Bonsall, who walked into the state office, possibly to get a commercial driver’s license, and got into an argument with one or more employees shortly before 10:20 a.m.
Dedrick said employees described Bonsall as “disgruntled” and, according to officials with Little Rock Fire Department’s Bomb Squad, which was called in to help, made several “anti-government, anti-the-system” statements before he left the office.
He didn’t take the bag with him, leaving the state workers to call police.
After evacuating the revenue office and a few adjacent businesses, North Little Rock police and fire officials were joined by state police officers, federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents, and a bomb-sniffing dog from Little Rock Air Force Base in securing an expansiveswath of the shopping complex’s parking lot.
Dedrick said officers found Bonsall, 38, on foot at a nearby McDonald’s and detained him, though Dedrick doubted the man would face any charges.
Little Rock’s bomb technicians made their way into the office at around 11:42 p.m. and took several X-rays of the bag, according to Weaver.
They spotted a power source, as well as some other things in the bag that gave them pause, Weaver said, but after a while, they figured out the power source was not wired to the rest of the bag’s contents, which held nothing suspicious.
“It was just random personal items … an aerosol can, cologne, a flashlight,” Weaver said. “But we try to take every precaution and take it seriously every time.”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 04/25/2013