Suspicious package blown up

Police conducted a controlled explosion on a suspicious package on campus on Tuesday 7 June.

A police spokesperson told the Boar the police were called to the Warwick University Science Park at approximately 10:30am.

The package was delivered to a unit on the Canley Science Park on Sir William Lyons Road and a controlled explosion was carried out in a field near to University House. The parcel was found to pose no security threat and was simply delivered to the wrong address.

According to the University’s Head of Communications Peter Dunn, the police “simply asked if they could use the field which we own to the rear of the Science Park to blow it up.” He added that the police said “there would be no risk to students or staff so we said we were happy to help.”

West Midlands Police described it as “standard procedure” to call in bomb disposal experts to deal with security alerts of this kind, but they did not confirm why the package was deemed suspicious in the first place.

Passer-by Stephan Braeuer told the Boar that there were lots of police around University House: “The whole field by University House was cordoned off and there were lots of police and police cars. I could not walk along the path and had to go the long way round to Arthur Vick.”

Braeuer also said he thought he heard a strange noise: “I suppose it did sound like a small explosion, but thought it was something like a firework or a car back-firing.”

Jamie Larkin, a first-year Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) student, said she heard something similar to a small explosion from her room in Tocil on that day: “It sounded like a gun-shot. One of my friends thought it sounded like someone had let off a firework in the middle of the day.”

Dunn said this was the first time this has happened in the 22 years he has been at the University.

A small number of concerned staff and students posted on social networking site Twitter about the high levels of police presence. Mr Dunn replied saying it was a police operation and that the University had “lent them a space to complete work” with “no risk to staff or students”.