The Calaveras County Sheriff's Office Bomb Squad uses a remote control robot to move a pack suspected of being a bomb from the steps of Jackson City Hall. Photo by: Scott Thomas Anderson A photo taken at the moment the pack blown up by the Bomb Squad. Photo by: Scott Thomas Anderson Investigators examine the remains of the pack after the bomb squad destroyed it with explosives. Photo by: Scott Thomas Anderson

Jackson's downtown district was brought to a standstill this afternoon, as law enforcement converged on a suspicious bag in front of City Hall that officers feared might be a bomb.

While it was unclear who left the suspicious bag, a young Calaveras man's threat to blow up Jackson City Hall a month before left officials taking no chances. At 2:45 p.m. the package was destroyed by the Calaveras County Bomb Squad with explosives.

Emergency responders, including Jackson City Fire Department and CAL FIRE, first converged on the scene in front of City Hall around 1:30 p.m. at the behest of the Jackson Police Department - whose headquarters are part of the building. The discovery of a strange-looking pack stuffed in the bushes directly between the two main flag poles had caused alarm, particularly in light of a prior threat recently made against the building.

According to Jackson Police Captain Christy Stidger, just weeks before, a young man had been suspected by Calaveras County law enforcement of possibly having plans to bomb Jackson City Hall. "Evidently he had maps and schematics of the building and things indicating he wanted to blow it up," Stidger said of the young suspect, not long before the package was detonated. Stidger said that individual had been arrested in Calaveras County, but that his threats, coupled with the manner and placement of the unknown pack, left her department in a position where they could not take chances with the public's safety.

By 2 p.m., the Calaveras County Bomb Squad, rendering mutual aid, used a remote control robot to move the pack from the bushes to a small make-shift bunker of sandbags on Broadway, directly between City Hall and Bank of America. While officers made the final preparations to ignite the pack, traffic delays began piling up from various directions in and out of the city.

At 2:45 p.m., a Calaveras Bomb Squad member shouted, "Fire in the hole!" three times before the pack erupted into a cloud of sand and debris. The Ledger Dispatch was soon permitted to inspect the detonated contents of the bag while officers combed through them. No explosive components or drugs were evident in the initial debris - and it was believed by at least some officers on scene that the pack likely belonged to a homeless person.

The Ledger Dispatch had a reporter on scene with law enforcement during the bomb scare