A two-block section of Third Avenue near the King County Courthouse was closed for two hours Friday morning after a man with a suspicious device wired to his arm told people he was a vampire looking for food.
Seattle Times staff reporters
Police described the device as a metal pipe with metal caps on each end, but said it was not yet clear whether it was explosive.
According to police, employees of a Second Avenue mission said the suspect, clad in black and covered in duct tape, had come into the mission "and threatened to blow the place up." He then told staffers "that he was a vampire and wanted to eat people."
The man, who also called himself "a space cowboy," showed the pipe-like device taped to his wrist. Staffers ushered the man out of the building and called police.
The man was gone when officers arrived, but was seen shortly afterward in a doorway in the 500 block of Third Avenue.
Police told him to lie down, which he did. Officers then gave the man a pair of surgical scissors and instructed him to remove the device, and he complied.
"At this point we don't know what it is," police spokesman Mark Jamieson said late Friday morning of the device. "It looked real enough to enough people."
After taking the man into custody, police used bomb-squad robots to inspect the device and removed it from the area for further examination.
After officers searched the suspect for any other potentially dangerous devices, the man was taken to the department's West Precinct for questioning and police said he would likely be booked into the King County Jail for threats to bomb.
Third Avenue was closed from James Street to Yesler Way, and was reopened shortly before 10 a.m.
Seattle Times staff reporter Emily Heffter contributed to this report