From The Brown County Democrat
NASHVILLE — Brown County law enforcement spent Friday evening in downtown Nashville after reports of bomb threats and a potential rooftop sniper were made in the area.
Brown County Sheriff Scott Southerland said the call began as a bomb threat and that Nashville Metropolitan Police Department began securing the area of Van Buren Street to Franklin Street and Old School Way to Franklin Street.
Once on scene, Nashville Police Chief Heather Burris was informed there was a bomb threat at Out of the Ordinary and took over incident command.
NPD officers, Brown County Sheriff’s deputies, Federal Bureau of Investigation officers, Indiana State Police troopers and conservation officers with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources responded.
Officers set up a perimeter and evacuated nearby businesses and restaurants, telling evacuees there was an active bomb threat in the area.
According to Burris and Southerland, the caller described officers he saw at the scene and trash cans outside of the building that he said had possible bombs in them.
The caller then stated he was on top of a building with a sniper rifle and he was going to start shooting at officers, Burris said.
ISP bomb dogs arrived and cleared the building and trash cans the caller described.
Before the dogs were deployed, detectives with the sheriff’s department used a drone to see if there was anything on top of the buildings. An immediate threat was not found.
Law enforcement determined the caller was using a restricted phone number that was traceable to a computer. The call traced to a Canadian site, Southerland said, with IP addresses bouncing from Iman, Jordan, Florida, New York and more.
Burris and Southerland said they believed the caller was using live video from a website to describe what was going on in that area.
A live webcam in the area overlooks Van Buren Street to the stoplight at Main Street, and officers could be seen on the video of downtown Nashville.
The caller was not identified and their true location was not immediately determined.
After officers cleared the scene, Burris said she was confident there was not an active threat for the town of Nashville.
“The most important thing to me was to make sure everyone was safe,” she said.
“Strategizing the most tactical way to approach it and make sure that we defeated the threat to the community and to the officers. It took every single one of us collaborating. Everyone played a huge part in the process. It took all of us.”
The investigation is still ongoing and involves NPD, BCSO, ISP and FBI agencies.
