Downtown Lexington Evacuated After Report of ‘Bomb Threat Involving an RV’

Police in Lexington, Kentucky, were asking people to avoid the downtown area after on New Year’s Eve after shutting down streets due to an undisclosed “incident.” The Lexington Herald-Leader reports that the police department said around 8:30 p.m. ET that its officers were “working an incident in the area of Short Street and Market” and that pedestrians and motorists were asked to avoid the area.

Around 8:45 p.m., police department officials added that traffic was shut down in the downtown area and the area of Vine Street to Third Street was being evacuated. The area of Broadway to Martin Luther King Boulevard was also being evacuated, police said. Police evacuated Mill Street just after 9 p.m., forcing people to leave a pizza restaurant and the apartments above it as well. Other downtown bars and restaurants were forced to close as well.

Some people leaving the area said they were asked to leave the area because of a bomb threat. They also said they saw police operating a robot. A witness in the area shared on Twitter that their vehicle was parked by an RV that officers were investigating.

A local reporter shared on Twitter that one couple said “they were told to get out of the area because of a bomb threat.” The reporter tweeted that “they said the police were operating a robot.” Another person shared that they were told “there was a suspicious vehicle in the adjacent parking lot” from an establishment they were evacuated from.

The incident occurred almost a week after an RV in downtown Nashville, Tennessee, exploded on Christmas Day outside an AT&T transmission building, injecting at least eight people and damaging more than 40 buildings. The remains of the bomber, Anthony Warner, were found at the scene. Investigators positively identified him by comparing DNA from the scene to that on gloves and a hat from a vehicle he owned. The motive for the explosion is still unknown.

The blast left the historic Nashville street in disarray, with federal investigators saying they expect it will take until Friday — a full week — to sift through the rubble and collect all of the evidence from the crime scene, officials said this week.