By Steve Timko • [email protected] • April 23, 2008
It still wasn't clear Tuesday if a device found Monday night near a Reno
animal testing facility was a bomb, something meant to look like a bomb
or just an electronics device lying alongside the road.
Reno police used a water cannon late Monday evening to destroy the
device found near the Charles River Laboratories on Longley Lane,
described as looking like two white hockey pucks connected with wires.
The device was across the street from Charles River
Laboratories, said Amy Cianciaruso, associate director of public
relations. A security guard found it Monday night.
"I know it was the beeping he had heard, and that's
what caused him to call the police," Cianciaruso said. "I don't know if
he actually saw it or not."
Animal rights groups had scheduled protests at the lab
for 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, but Cianciaruso said there was nothing to link
the incident to any group. There have been no threats to the facility,
she said.
"We don't know what it was," Cianciaruso said of the
object.
Charles River Laboratories was cited for 20 violations
in 2006, including two monkeys whose fingers were squashed and amputated
at the firm's Sparks laboratory, and 11 in the first half of 2007,
according to documents obtained by the organization Stop Animal
Exploitation Now, which is based in Cincinnati.
Charles River Laboratories has operated a facility on
Dunne Circle in the Sparks industrial area for 15 years and, in the
winter, opened one of the largest in the country at 6995 Longley Lane.
Charles River Laboratories has done animal research to
test and develop drugs since 1947, with about 8,000 employees at 101
facilities, offices and laboratories in 17 countries.
Charles River
Laboratories, Sparks, NV