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Wednesday, 03 December 2008 |
By MARY BARGDILL
Staff Writer
ST. MARYS — A site that is normally filled with customers rushing to pay for their gas and teenagers looking for a quick bite to eat was the scene of a bomb scare Tuesday morning.
The St. Marys Marathon, located at 202 W. South St., is a popular hang out for Memorial High School students — especially during the busy lunch hour. A detonation device found in a black bookbag near one of the station’s gas pumps changed that.
Store manager Deb Vining said the book bag was discovered by a customer and turned in to employees for safe keeping.
“One of our customers, around 8:30 brought in a book bag,” Vining said.
Vining and two employees thought the item belonged to a school student who forgot their bookbag on their way to school that morning. They placed the bag inside the door of the gas station so the student could easily pick it up if he or she returned for it.
Eventually, the employees decided to open the bag to look for the name of the student the bag belonged to. They found something completely different than a name tag.
“When Michelle opened it — there it was,” Vining said. “Two pop bottles had solution in them rigged up to wires, so we called the cops then.”
Vining said evacuating the building was not an initial reaction of hers.
“I didn’t think to do that at the time because we thought it was just a school kid’s project,” she said.
They did however call the police. When officers with the St. Marys Police Department arrived at the scene, they called in the bomb squad.
Vining said one of the first things she did was shut off the gas tanks.
“We were a little scared,” she said. “We didn’t know if it was a joke. We were like, what in the world?’ We just looked at each other like, ‘can you believe this is happening?’”
From the window of Cool’s Locker Room, restaurant owners Tammy and Mike Cool watched as law enforcement vehicles arrived at the Marathon station.
Initially they thought the gas station had been robbed. Then they learned there had been a bomb scare.
“We didn’t know what to think,” Tammy Cool said. “We were a little scared. We didn’t know if it was real. In little St. Marys you don’t think that’s going to happen.”
Authorities did not evacuate their store located on the 100 block of South Main Street, Tammy said.
Larry Kramer, who was at work in the St. Marys Hobby Center and Trading Company, said they did not do anything differently during the bomb scare.
“(It) happened at a time when we weren’t real busy, so it wasn’t a real panic,” Kramer said.
Like the Marathon station, the Hobby Center is a common stop for hungry teenagers during their school lunch break. For Kramer, knowing what could have happened at an establishment that is frequented by so many students was unnerving.
“That’s a very scary thought,” he said.
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Last Updated ( Monday, 08 December 2008 )
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