ENON, Ohio -- Employees at Speedway LLC had some tense moments on Thursday morning as the result of a bomb scare that ended with the Dayton bomb squad detonating a suspicious, unattended package near the Speedway corporate headquarters, reported The Springfield News-Sun.
Hundreds of employees were forced to wait two to four hours outside. At press time Friday, there was no official word on what--if anything--the package contained.
A section of Interstate 70 eastbound was shut down for about half an hour because of the incident.
The package, which was found in the parking lot of the business around 7:00 a.m., was described as square-shaped, but couldn't be identified, local fire officials told the newspaper. A Clark County Sheriff's Office report cited by the News-Sun said the package appeared to be a square box covered in tape.
According to Speedway spokesperson Shane Pochard, employees there called authorities and followed an emergency plan to keep everyone safe. "We worked with [authorities] to take care of it," Pochard told the paper.
Pochard told CSP Daily News that the company had no official additional comments on the matter.
The buildings of both Speedway, which employs approximately 700 people, and Seepex, which employs approximately 100, were locked down to help the bomb squad investigate. The buildings were locked down between 8:00 and 11:00 a.m.
The entrance on Speedway Drive was also shut down, forcing hundreds of employees to park at nearby businesses, said the report.
Speedway officials and local authorities couldn't estimate the number of employees in the building at the time it was locked down. Those employees remained in the building during the lockdown.
The Dayton bomb squad used a robot to examine the package and decided to detonate it, according to the sheriff's report.
Further investigation of the package will be handled by the state fire marshal's office, the report said, and evidence obtained from the scene was collected and sent to the state fire marshal's forensic lab.
Enon, Ohio-based Speedway is a subsidiary of Marathon Petroleum Corp. (MPC), Findlay, Ohio. MPC operates approximately 1,370 gas station/convenience stores in seven states.
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