A visitor to the Santa Barbara County Courthouse who accidentally forgot a messenger bag under a hallway bench triggered a big evacuation. Someone noticed the bag at around nine a.m. Friday, and after no one claimed it, several hundred people were evacuated from the complex.
The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office Bomb Squad was deployed, and a robot was used to examine the bag. But, while that was underway at around 11:30, the bag’s owner returned to the courthouse, and said they had forgotten it. There was nothing dangerous in the bag, and the Courthouse reopened around lunchtime.
