PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — The words “bomb on the bus” heard from a cellphone set it all off: Downtown Portsmouth shut down, businesses and homes evacuated, sharpshooters and an armored vehicle rolling in.
The parked, New York City-bound Greyhound was surrounded for nine hours Thursday, until the man who took the call, an immigrant from the African nation of Burundi, finally emerged. Police now say their “appropriate” show of force so frightened the passenger that he refused to leave the bus until a family member helped talk him out.
“It wasn’t long before we realized he was scared. We didn’t feel it was criminal intent,” Portsmouth Police Chief David Ferland said Friday, a day after the bomb scare.
Authorities did not release the name of the passenger, who Ferland said will not face charges. Police say he was a native Swahili speaker who understood limited English.
The ordeal on the bus, which was headed from Bangor, Maine, to New York, started Thursday morning when a passenger overheard “a strange man” speaking a foreign language on a cellphone, police said.
The passenger called 911 after hearing someone on the other end of the call shouting about “a bomb on the bus,” authorities said. The Associated Press
