FOUNTAIN HILL, Pa. - A bomb scare at St. Luke's Fountain Hill campus shut down its emergency room for a couple of hours Friday morning. This was no threat - an actual explosive device was found on a patient.
Fountain Hill police say the man was transported to the St. Luke's emergency room at about 7 a.m. after injuring himself in a single-vehicle car accident in Lower Saucon. Hospital staff found a pipe bomb in his backpack while they were logging his possessions.
"You get a lot of hoaxes, you get a lot of threats, it's rare to find an actual device. I've been doing this over 30 years and I can count on one hand the type of devices we've found that were operational," said Fountain Hill Police Chief Ed Bachert.
Bachert says this was quite out of the ordinary.
The discovery of the pipe bomb set off a chain of events.
"Out of abundance of caution the ER was evacuated," said St. Luke's Director of Marketing Steve Andrews.
Police were called, as well as the Allentown bomb squad and the FBI.
"When you're looking at a crime that is possible to affect a lot of people or injure or kill a lot of people, we rely on those guys for assistance," Bachert said.
Thankfully, no one was injured, and the emergency department was able to reopen after a couple of hours. The device is now in the hands of the bomb squad.
"It was a live device or a functioning device and we'll know more in about a day or two. They're probably going to detonate it," Bachert said.
And as for what the bomb was doing in the backpack?
"At this point we believe that he forgot that he had it in that pack," Bachert said.
Police still aren't sure why he had it in the first place, or what he was planning on doing with it, but he's not getting off easy.
"It's going to be a weapon of mass destruction charge, which is a very serious crime," Bachert said.
The man was questioned by police at the Fountain Hill Station, and they say he is cooperating. He was then transported back to the hospital due to his injuries in the crash.
Police say they hope to have him arraigned Friday night.
