Voting was interrupted for about three hours Tuesday when a pipe bomb was found outside an Iowa polling location, officials said.
A couple walking their dog found the device just before 9:30 a.m. outside Lakeside Center, a multipurpose building in Ankeny, police and Polk County Auditor and Commissioner of Elections Jamie Fitzgerald said.
Located about 15 miles north of downtown Des Moines, the center was one of the 14 sites in Ankeny where voters were casting their ballots on a local school spending measure.
Voting at the Lakeside Center came to a halt while authorities worked to secure the explosive, which had a fuse and could not be detonated remotely, Ankeny police Sgt. Corey Schneben said.
Voters and poll workers were forced to evacuate the building, and a bomb squad from the state fire marshal’s office was called to the scene.
Authorities lifted the evacuation order and voting resumed after the device was safely detonated, but no arrests were immediately made in connection with the incident.
Officials said they don’t believe the explosive was tied to Tuesday’s vote.
“We don’t have any indication of that,” Schneben told NBC News. “Usually in an election like this, you might get about a thousand people to vote in it. It wasn’t like a big headline in the paper saying this (election) was happening.”
The explosive was made from a CPVC pipe, about 6 to 8 inches long and 1 1/2 inches in diameter, two caps and explosive powder inside, according to Ron Humphrey, the Iowa State Fire Marshal special agent in charge.
“If someone were within 20 to 50 feet there would have been some kind of injuries, but other than that, it wasn’t that big,” Humphrey said Wednesday.
It wasn’t clear how long the device was there, as about a dozen voters had to be directed to other polling stations, Fitzgerald said.
Even though no one was injured on Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Cindy Axne, D-Iowa, said the incident was still troubling.
“I’m deeply concerned to learn that a pipe bomb was found at a polling place in Ankeny earlier today,” she said Tuesday in a tweet. “This threat to our elections in unacceptable, and those responsible should be held accountable for this attempted violence against our democracy and its citizens.”
Measure AA, which asked voters if the Ankney Community School District should spend on various capital and infrastructure upgrades, passed 1,298 to 172.
Fitzgerald thanked the dog walkers who spotted the explosive by a light pole near the center’s parking lot and told election staff.
“It’s nice that everyone is seeing something and saying something,” Fitzgerald said.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
