The Richard C. Lee United States Court House in New Haven was evacuated this afternoon in response to a statewide bomb threat alert.
At about 9:30 a.m. Connecticut state government offices started receiving several non-specific threats to courthouses and other state facilities, prompting officials to close courthouses across the state. Specially-trained teams with bomb-sniffing dogs are running security sweeps through the buildings, Connecticut State Police spokesman William Tate said.
“It was a very non-specific threat,” Tate said. “A decision was made that most of the courthouses were to be cleared so the state police can go in there and check the facilities.”
Tate declined to release information on the nature of the threats, citing an ongoing criminal investigation into the incident. But a spokesman for Gov. M. Jodi Rell said the threats had been called in to the governor’s Constituent Office as well as judicial offices.
Several bystanders said they had been evacuated from the New Haven courthouse at 1 p.m., and that police had told them at the time that they thought the threat might be related to a gang-related case in the building. The courthouse will remain closed until Monday.