Suspicious Toilet Causes Evacuation At Gwinnett Wal-Mart

LILBURN, GA — A Wal-Mart in Gwinnett County was evacuated Wednesday evening after a customer found a suspicious device in a men's bathroom. The device, it turns out, was an automatic toilet flusher that had been taken apart.

"In a nutshell, it was nothing," said Lilburn Police Department spokesman Capt. Thomas Bardugon.

The store, at 4004 Lawrenceville Hwy. in Lilburn, was given the all-clear by Gwinnett County Police at about 7:30 p.m.

The police department's Hazardous Device Unit responded after the customer reported the piece of toilet hardware to managers at the store. Someone, possibly a maintenance person, had taken the flusher apart and wires were sticking out of it, Bardugon said. The managers didn't know what it was, either, so they called police.

Customers and employees were evacuated from the store "in an overabundance of caution" while the unit investigated the device.

"There was nothing but the toilet flushing mechanism present," Bardugon said.

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