A loud device instructing people to evacuate Kwik Shop near Kasold Drive and Bob Billings Parkway Thursday night turned out to be a carbon monoxide detector, according to Lawrence police.
According to emergency radio traffic, a device was alerting people — from inside a trash can — to “evacuate.”
Officers with the University of Kansas Public Safety office started the investigation, and the building was evacuated around 11 p.m. Thursday, according to scanner traffic.
Law enforcement shut down 14th Street around midnight, and they called a bomb squad out of Overland Park to help with the investigation.
Around 1 a.m., an officer said over the scanner that the device had stopped making noise, and about 45 minutes later, officers were told they could pull up the barricades and clear the area.
Lawrence police tweeted a thanks to the Overland Park Police Department just after 3 a.m. Friday:
“The area around Kasold and Bob Billings Pky. is safe.
Thanks to @OverlandPark_PD’s Bomb Squad, we found one very loud, discarded carbon monoxide detector in the garbage still blasting a verbal warning.”
