Suspicious package closes Chapel Hill Street
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. (WTVD) -- The Chapel Hill Police Department shut down a section of East Franklin Street for hours Monday while they investigated a suspicious package.
People in cars and on foot were diverted from a 1.2 mile stretch of the popular roadway from Estes Street down to Boundary Street - which is close to the UNC campus.
Chapel Hill police brought in the Durham Sheriff's Department Bomb Squad but police said they couldn't identify the device right away and the special unit detonated it on site.
ABC11 crews heard the loud, low "boom" of the detonation and East Franklin opened up around 1 p.m.
"It's surprising and concerning," said long time Chapel Hill resident and businessman David Allen.
Allen owns the Sunrise Biscuit Kitchen and couldn't get to his restaurant or his home, which was at the other end of the shutdown portion of East Franklin Street.
"I'm afraid more things like that are going to happen as the future goes along, but hopefully it's an abnormality," said Allen.
UNC law school graduate Macrae Robinson had a similar take.
"It's unusual for Chapel Hill to have any sort of bomb threat," said Robinson. "I spent seven or eight years here and never heard of a bomb threat anywhere around here. So it's new for me and new for the community as well."
