Police were called to check out a piece of “suspicious luggage” in front of 39 Eldridge Street in Chinatown at around 1:45 pm this afternoon. A resident who lives across the street from the building, which houses the Preschool of America, sent B+B this video of the incident which captures a member of the bomb squad carefully dismantling a suitcase.
According to the neighbor, they were uncertain of what exactly all the commotion was about until they heard someone yelling from outside their window: “Stay away from your windows!” They looked out on to the street to find “the whole corner cordoned off and everyone looking down the block at something.”
The resident waited to whip out the video camera. “That’s when I saw the bomb dude come and place a device nearby the suitcase in question, presumably an X-Ray scanner of some sort then ten minutes later he came back and that’s when I started to video what was happening.” The video shows the bomb squad specialist “get on his belly and start to further inspect the suitcase which he starts to carefully slice open.” Tension rises as “he pulls out some metal box then fully opens the suspect suitcase, where he found nothing.”
According to the NYPD, the bomb squad deemed the suspicious luggage safe by 2:20 pm. Another witness to the incident described a scene in which, “[a man] cluelessly wanders out of the building next door, i.e. the cup and saucer building and nearly walks towards the [suspected] bomb and all the marshals started yelling, ‘You, over here! Get over here, right now!'”
As for the bag’s contents? According to the NYPD, the suitcase contained “a DVD player.”