PORTLAND, OR—The
Southside Mall, a sprawling center of commerce near downtown Portland, was evacuated this afternoon
following the discovery of a suspicious package.
"I saw it just sitting there, and I was all like,
what?" Tyler Johnson, 17, said just outside the perimeter set up by the
Portland Police Department. "I mean, who just leaves a backpack out in
front of Forever 21 like that? Someone could like totally steal it and stuff."
PPD spokeswoman Alice Chandler said the backpack aroused the
suspicion of shoppers because of its clean and "obviously new"
appearance.
"Typically," Mrs. Chandler said, "backpacks
dropped in the Portland
metro area are covered in filth. Dirt, mud, sweat stains. And, typically,
they're surrounded in an almost tangible cloud of body odor and stale weed. But
this backpack didn't fit the profile, hence the evacuation. For the safety of
the public."
When the backpack was unzipped by a brave member of the PPD
bomb squad, its mystery only deepened.
"An examination of its contents just put us into
full-on crisis mode," Mrs. Chandler said. "The backpack contained
nothing but neatly folded articles of clothing, some foodstuffs, and a few
bottles of water. No drugs, no crude weapons, no handmade panhandling signs. Obviously,
this is not what you expect to find in an abandoned backpack in Portland, so you can
understand the precautions we took."
The backpack was eventually destroyed by the bomb squad for
safety reasons, leveling the Forever 21 store and causing approximately
$300,000 in damage to neighboring shops.
