LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Louisville Metro Police, the FBI and the ATF worked for over five hours to secure an area downtown Friday after the call that there was a suspicious device on 5th Street.
The man who originally found the device is the husband of one of WHAS11's employees and is choosing to remain unnamed for safety reasons.
"I happened to see something in the corner of my eye at the bus stop, and kind of did a double take," he said.
At the time, he said, many things were running through his head.
He didn't want to cause a scene, but also didn't want to ignore it so he made sure to take this photo to ask for help.
"I just told somebody in the lobby of my building, like, hey, what does this look like to you? And they immediately called it in," he said.
He said the labeling on it seemed too obvious but still convincing.
"When you see a bomb labeled as a bomb, it kinda like, takes some of the sting out of it, doesn't seem real, but then as I was looking closer, I was like, actually, there's a lot of like, pretty sophisticated like, tubes or wiring coming out of it," he said.
As the day progressed and first responders continued to investigate, he said the gravity of the whole thing began to set in.
"When I saw the bomb robot and the squad, my first thought was like, 'Man, that was so stupid to get close to that thing and take a picture of it.'"
After more than five hours of the bomb squad on scene, LMPD reopened the area.
"We will be transporting it off-site for further testing. And the FBI will be taking control of the investigation," said LMPD Chief Erika Shields.
The man who found the device said it feels surreal and spoke to a sign of the times.
"With everything that's going on in the world, I think maybe we've become a little too desensitized," he said. "And the fact that, like me walking by a bomb and then just like, 'Oh, let me snap a pic of that.'"
He said he's just happy he was able to alert the right people and no one was hurt.
Police have yet to say what the item was.
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