(Reuters circulated the following story on March 22.)
OAKLAND, Calif. — Police were searching for two men who falsely reported a bomb threat aboard a crowded commuter train heading for San Francisco on Wednesday morning, a police officer said.
“One of them said ‘there is a bomb on the train, there is a bomb,’ and then the walked away,” Maria White, the administrative commander for BART police, told Reuters.
She said the train left the downtown Oakland station after the threat and was then evacuated at the next stop in West Oakland.
Thousands of commuters were delayed getting into San Francisco after the incident began at 8:03 a.m.; the station was reopened by 8:52 a.m., said BART spokesman Jim Allison.
Police helicopters and teams on the ground, including with bomb-sniffing dogs, searched the station before reopening the West Oakland station, the last stop before the system connects under the Bay to San Francisco.
BART police initially detained two men, but they were allowed to go after an eyewitness said they were not the men who made the threat, White said.