Thomas W. Breen Photo
The empty pressure cookers, after cops opened them.
Police closed off Whalley Avenue from Blake Street to Emerson just as rush hour began Tuesday afternoon so they could investigate two pressure cookers left out on the street.
Police spokesman Officer David Hartman said a passerby notified police about the pressure cookers left on the Whalley sidewalk by the Mitchell branch library at around 4 p.m.
The New Haven police bomb squad was dispatched to investigate the pressure cookers. Nearby buildings, including the Westville Branch library, Congregation Beth El Keser Israel and several homes, were evacuated.
Detective Rosa Melendez, in a full bomb suit, approached the pressure cookers to X‑ray them. She took pictures of one of them and then brought it to a bomb squad van parked half a block away on Whalley, where a team analyzed the pictures.
She then returned to photograph the second and have the team analyze those.
At 5:52, Hartman announced: “They’re empty. We’re reopening the street.”
Police took caution to keep people away from the scene before that. The Boston marathon bombings, featuring pressure cookers, were not far from people’s minds.
In the end this may have been a mean-spirited hoax, but no one was hurt. Police are investigating to try to find out who left the devices there and why.
A forum was planned at Beth El Keser Israel in conjunction with the sorority Delta Sigma Theta about the effects of the incoming Trump administration on New Haven. That forum was to begin at 6 p.m.; it began at 6:30 p.m with a full crowd, some of whom had been stuck in the Whalley bumper-to-bumper traffic..
Those look like rice cookers. Just sayin