Diners at a restaurant in Murfreesboro, Tennessee had a scare yesterday morning when somebody noticed a car parked outside with a "suspicious device" plastered to its side. In fact, police evacuated many businesses in the area, as well as a major intersection, worried that the strips covered in duct tape and wires were a bomb.
First responders rushed to the scene and "told us there was a bomb threat and basically screamed at us to get out," said a woman who worked in one of the evacuated buildings.
But after two hours of high drama, the strange apparatus turned out to be nothing more than DIY rubber bumpers, created by the car owner to prevent dings.
"We had a massive, massive response to this location to find out it was a man who was trying to prevent his car from being dented," said Murfreesboro's public safety information officer, via KRON 4.
The punchline to the story is that the car's owner had been standing with a crowd of evacuees across the street from the scene of the scare almost the entire time, not realizing until he finally got a call from authorities that it was his own handmade gizmo that had caused the brouhaha.
Since the eyesore was created without malice, the gentleman will not be charged.
