School evacuated in bomb scare

Police evacuated Walt Disney Elementary School on Monday afternoon

after a suspicious briefcase was found in a park across the street.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department bomb squad found only

a videotape of “Pulp Ficton” inside, police said.

A parent notified school officials about the briefcase just before

2 p.m. “She came in to pick up her child because of the power

outage,” Disney Principal Bobbie Kavanaugh said. “She told us, ‘I saw

a briefcase over in the park.’”

Burbank officers blocked off a stretch of Clark Street between

Mariposa and Lomita streets and limited access to the parking lot at

Izay Park for more than an hour but did not evacuate any residences.

“Based on the situation it was enough for us to treat as a

suspicious package,” Burbank Police Lt. David Gabriel said.

The briefcase was in a grassy area near the brick bleachers of one

of the ball fields in the park.

Police initially had Kavanaugh evacuate just the classrooms

closest to the area where the briefcase was located. Then about 10

minutes later they recommended that the whole school be evacuated and

the students sent home, Kavanaugh said.

“They were already in the process of coming out of the rooms,”

Kavanaugh said of when the evacuation order was given.

The bomb squad used a remote control robot to examine the

briefcase followed by one its officers opening it to find the

videotape.