Raffle Tickets Spark Bomb Scare

A stash of raffle tickets sparked a serious scare in one Colorado Springs neighborhood, forcing a street closure that lasted several hours.

Jerry Cvar and his fiancee noticed the raffle tickets found inside their mailbox early Wednesday morning.

?There were so many of them stuffed in there,? said Jerry Cvar. He said a string of pink tickets were hanging out of the mailbox. ?It just didn?t look right to us.?

Cvar feared that if he opened the mailbox it might blow up, so he called 911.

?I too thought it was unusual,? said Colorado Springs police officer Daniel Thompson, who responded to the call.

The street was closed off and the bomb squad was called in to x-ray the contents of the mailbox.

?I was ultimately the one who made the decision,? said Thompson.

It turned out to be a false alarm.

As of late, the Colorado Springs bomb squad has been called out for other suspicious packages that turned out to be nothing.

KRDO asked Thompson if he was concerned about the frequency of those occurrences.

?I think it comes down to people being more aware of their surroundings and knowing that things are not right,? said Thompson. ?We end up responding out to a few more of these types of calls.?

But he said it all comes down to one thing.

?It?s better to be safe than sorry,? said Thompson.

?I feel safe now,? said Cvar.