It was an exciting evening in Winlock on Saturday evening, every law enforcement agency was here for what appeared to be a pipe bomb. The lighting of the community Christmas Tree was cancelled and Kerron Street was blocked off.
A group from The Lions Club were getting the area ready for the Christmas Tree lighting and noticed a suspicious pipe sticking out of the bottom of the Egg. They called the Winlock Fire Department to look at the pipe and they immediately called the Toledo Police Department. Per Officer Randy Pennington a Reserve Officer for the Toledo Police Department, it was "a capped pipe they could see with wires coming out of it."
Officer Randy Pennington responded, and after looking at the pipe took a photo of the suspicious looking pipe and sent it immediately to the Washington State Patrol Bomb Squad.
Washington State Patrol Bomb Squad was immediately en route to Winlock and so was the Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and a Lewis County Sheriff. The ATF was called because anytime there is a scheduled gathering of people and a suspicious, possibly a bomb is found they must be involved. Officer Pennington also called the Burlington Northern Sante Fe Law Enforcement who shut down all rail traffic going through Winlock until they could identify what the pipe actually was.
Washington State Patrol took one look at the pipe sticking out of the egg and knew they needed to be cautious. Per Officer Pennington the Bomb Squad "thought it was the real deal." Thankfully after many hours they were able to retrieve it and discovered it was a time capsule from 1991. There were pictures and newspaper articles in the time capsule and supposedly there is a video cassette that has not been found yet.
The Christmas lighting was cancelled and after seeing the pictures of what looked like, it was definitely the correct and cautious thing to do for the citizens of Winlock and their families. They have rescheduled the event for this Thursday, Dec. 14 at 6:00 p.m. with Santa arriving at 6:30 p.m.