Thomas Breen Photo
The cookers on the street.
Cops feared the worst when they rushed to upper Whalley Avenue to investigate abandoned pressure cookers.
Turns out there was nothing to fear but the possibility, or impossibility of rice.
Westville top cop, Sgt. Renee Dominguez, updated a crowd of neighbors Wednesday gathered at the Mauro Sheridan School for the monthly community management team meeting about the Dec. 6 incident, which led cops to shut down parts of upper Whalley Avenue for close to two hours during rush hour.
A passerby had notified police of what appeared to be pressure cookers left on the Whalley sidewalk by the Mitchell branch library by Harrison Street at around 4:10 p.m. The two cookers appeared to be similar to those used in the Boston marathon bombing, but bigger.
The cookers’ close proximity to the Beth El Keser Israel synagogue and the Mitchell branch library raised concerns about the potential for people to be hurt. Police also suspected someone was trying to commit a crime of hate. The library and the synagogue were evacuated.
The fact that Beth El Keser Israel’s congregation had teamed up with a historically black sorority, Delta Sigma Theta Inc., to host a forum on the impact of the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump on the same night that the cookers were found further added fuel to those fears.
All of this was happening a day after a fire at the Jewish Community Center in Woodbridge. At the time that fire’s cause was unknown. It turns out that fire was an accident.
People were also aware of a recent spraypainting of swastikas on a portion of the Wilbur Cross athletic complex.
Had hate come to New Haven?
Markeshia Ricks Photo
Dominguez
Dominguez said in fact, it had not, at least not that night.
She said two days after the whole ordeal was investigated, and the cookers were found to be empty, she got a phone call. It was from one of the English-speaking congregants of the New Haven Korean United Methodist Church. They’d seen the story about the evacuation, shutdown of the street and the bomb squad in the Independent. (When that article was published, one reader, Robn, commented, “Those look like rice cookers. Just sayin.”)
“They use rice cookers,” Dominguez said. “They had thrown the rice cookers — they didn’t work — in the Dumpster.”
She said she further discovered that somebody had apparently fished the cookers out of the dumpster, hoping they’d be worth something at a scrap yard. But when that person tried to board a city bus, the driver, recognizing that those cookers might be bombs, would not allow the person to get on the bus.
So the person abandoned the two broken cookers on the side of the street.
“Thankfully, nobody was trying to blow up the Trump [forum], the synagogue, the library or the Korean church,” Dominguez concluded.