Suspicious package investigation continues

No suspects have been identified in connection with the suspicious package found  near the Chapel on the UTRGV Edinburg campus last Tuesday, University Police says.

“On the suspicious package, as far as update, it’s still under investigation,” University Police Chief Raul Munguia said last Thursday in a phone interview with The Rider. “We don’t have any suspects, we haven’t received any leads or anything from the community as far as who might have left it there or how it got there. It’s still up in the air.”

Munguia said the item did not look like any explosive device he has seen in the past.

“We don’t really know what it was or what the purpose of it was, we don’t even know how long it was out there,” he said. “It was just paper and pipe cleaners.”

University Police does not know how long the package was near the Chapel, the chief said.

“The last time they cleaned up in there was a little over a month ago, so it could have been in there,” he said. “Also, it fell out of the bushes … when they were trimming [them]. It could have been there quite some time, we just don’t know. It’s a mystery, sort of speak.”

Munguia said a groundskeeper found the package.

“The McAllen bomb squad came and picked up the item and they actually opened it up and it was not an explosive device,” he said the day of the incident. “It was just a device … designed to look like an improvised explosive device, but in the end, it was not an explosive.”

UTRGV’s bomb-sniffing dog was dispatched from Brownsville to the Edinburg campus.

In an interview last Tuesday, Patrick Gonzales, UTRGV’s associate vice president for University Marketing and Communications, said certain areas of campus were closed during the incident.

“We didn’t open the Student Union,” Gonzales said. “Obviously, we didn’t open the Chapel and we sent out a message letting our students know and asking them to avoid the area that was roped off.”

An alert was sent via the UTRGV Emergency Notification System to the campus community at 6:49 a.m. last Tuesday asking the campus community to avoid the vicinity of the Chapel and surrounding buildings.

A second alert was sent later that morning, at 8:47 a.m., stating: “All clear. Suspicious package has been safely removed from the UTRGV Edinburg campus. All clear.”

“We enforce the notion out there that if our students or faculty and staff, if they see anything that looks suspicious or out of place, don’t hesitate to call us,” Munguia said. “In the end, we want the campus to remain safe and us as a police department, are much more effective when the community also takes part in some responsibility in reporting what they see to us.”