Man mistakes e-cigarette for bomb – police called and bus evacuated

Police were called to reports of a bomb on a bus recently – but the ‘suspect’ turned out to be cleaning an e-cigarette.

The bus, which was on the A77 close to Newton Mearns in East Renfrewshire, Scotland, was evacuated.

Passenger Calum McGregor explained to STV: ‘My partner and I became aware of a passenger behaving suspiciously with a device in his lap.

‘I got up under the pretence of looking for the toilet and saw he appeared to be attaching pipe-cleaner wire to a large oblong battery.

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‘I alerted the driver of a possible bomb on board and asked him to quietly pull over and call the police.’

Mr McGregor voiced his anger at his fellow passenger for sparking the emergency.

He said: ‘It turned out that the passenger, a tourist, had been cleaning out a large e-cigarette device with no thought to what that looked like to others on the bus – resulting in a lot of concern and fear, passengers stuck outside for 40 mins off the motorway with no shelter in a storm, motorway closure and police time wasted.’

Police later confirmed it was a false alarm.

http://metro.co.uk/author/dave-burke-for-metro-co-uk/