Thursday afternoon at approximately 1 p.m. a USPS employee discovered a suspicious package in the mail receptacle located on the Northwest corner of West and Water streets next to the Decatur County Courthouse and reported it to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

Following the notification, the GBI notified Bainbridge Public Safety Deputy Director Frank Green and BPS officers immediately responded to the area and began the process of blocking roads and evacuating citizens.

BPS Investigator Chip Nix was also notified and said his first thoughts were to begin collecting the why information.

“Why would someone put a bomb there? What is its intended purpose? Who would this person be targeting?” are the questions he asked himself.

While Nix pondered over the questions and began collecting evidence, the GBI Bomb Disposal Unit responded to the scene and utilized a REMOTEC Andros robot to retrieve the suspicious package within the mail receptacle. The package was then detonated within the controlled environment. Following the mild explosion, remnants of the package lay scattered across the street and BPS investigators moved in and began marking and analyzing the remnants. The remnants indicated that the package was not an explosive device, but was used for a different type of crime.

Nix said they believe the package was being used as a makeshift device to stick in the mailbox in hopes of retrieving other people’s mail. The box was covered in tape and wiring so that envelopes and other items could stick to it. However to the naked eye, it was difficult to determine the purpose of the object.

“Even when GBI got there, with the naked eye you couldn’t tell what this object was being used for,” Nix said.

Nix is thankful to Matt Marchant and Chris Dorsey with the GBI for helping aid in this situation.

The roadways were later reopened, but BPS is asking that anyone who may have noticed a person lingering around the mail receptacle over the last 48 hours to contact them or submit an anonymous crime tip.

Nix reminds everyone to be vigilant and aware of their surroundings and keep an eye out for things that look out of the ordinary.