Any update? Was it somebody’s mini-keg?
An elaborate hoax involving a fake but “incredibly lifelike” bomb caused the cancellation of Manchester United’s final Premier League game of the season at Old Trafford.
About a year after 9/11, I watched the San Diego fire department do a controlled demolition of what was obviously an old tube television that once had been mounted up in the corner of some classroom.
There was every reason to believe that it was exactly what it looked like, and not an IED. It was just dumped on a sidewalk in an area full of condos and apartments housing mostly UCSD students and young singles. Due to landscaping, the nearest building was probably 40 feet away and 12 feet up a slope. I hoped at the time that the FD saw it as a good opportunity to do a live drill. They would have been blowing things up nonstop if they had their threat standards set low enough to blow up illegally dumped TVs.
I guess I’m just sharing a story, because the precaution taken at the soccer stadium doesn’t seem unreasonable given that terrorists have already targeted soccer games in Europe.
Edit: above was written before I read carlosfiance’s link explaining that the “suspicious item” was deliberately made to resemble a phone-triggered pipe bomb. Clearing the stadium was a must. And no, this does not excuse the ridiculous reaction to Ahmed’s pencil box.
Story suggest not so much a hoax as a really stupid thing for someone to forget. (At some point the danger due to disaster drills crosses over with the danger due to the disasters themselves.)