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Nordstrom Roosevelt Field Mall Bomb Threat

Nordstrom bomb threat
Emergency Services and K-9 unit officers searched Nordstrom after officers responded to a 911 call reporting a bomb threat. (Timothy Bolger/Long Island Press)

The Nordstrom department store at Roosevelt Field Mall was evacuated following a bomb threat that turned out to be a false alarm on Friday afternoon, Nassau County police said.

Emergency Services and K-9 unit officers searched the East Garden City building after officers responded to a 911 call reporting the threat being phoned in at 2:15 p.m., according to a police spokesman.

“At first I thought it was a fire seeing people running like that,” James Johnson, 22, of Roosevelt told the Press outside the store, where he heard screams while he waited for his girlfriend to finish shopping. “Some people were calm, others were frantic.”

No explosives were found inside and the building was reopened to shoppers by 4 p.m., police said.

The incident came after police also responded to a hand grenade found at a Long Island Rail Road overpass in Farmingdale shortly after noon, police said.

The device was taken into police custody for further investigation by Arson/Bomb Squad detectives.

Third Squad detectives are investigating the mall bomb scare, which came two weeks after a gunman shot two at a nearby restaurant, killing one.

It also comes after a shoplifted knocked over a display case at the mall on Christmas Eve, which made a sound that some shoppers thought was gunfire, sparking another scare. That incident followed a fatal shooting at a company near the mall that led some mistakenly believed occurred inside the mall, which was locked down afterward.