Bomb Squad deals with suspicious package at Farson Post Office
by Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office
June 16, 2012
(Rock Springs, Wyo. - June 15, 2012) A 63-year-old transient remains in custody after an incident involving a suspicious package at the Post Office in Farson on June 13.
At about 6:45 PM on the 13th, deputies were dispatched to the Farson Post Office when a man later identified as Nicholas Lynn Hoffman Yager tried to mail a package with a great deal of writing on it addressed to a number of top federal officials. The postmistress became concerned when Hoffman Yager, who was behaving strangely, admonished her to handle the package carefully.
At that point the Sweetwater Bomb Squad was called out and Bomb Squad technicians Tony Niemiec of the Sweetwater County Sheriff’s Office, Debbie Tippy of the Green River Police Department, and Paul Schoenfeld of the Rock Springs Police Department collected their equipment and headed for Farson.
Undersheriff Craig Jackson said Deputy Sheriff Mike Merkley and Trooper Jeff Aulman of the Wyoming Highway Patrol located Hoffman Yager at Mitch’s Café in Farson and discovered that he was in the bathroom, changing clothes. When the officers told him to come out of the bathroom, he began yelling obscenities, causing a disturbance.
At that point, Merkley and Aulman removed Hoffman Yager from the bathroom and took him into investigative detention.
During a subsequent interview, Hoffman Yager spoke of himself as an associate of the CIA.
Bomb Squad technicians x-rayed the package at the scene to make some determinations concerning its contents, then rendered it safe by disrupting it. The package was classified as an intentionally-manufactured hoax device that contained no explosives. No one was injured during the course of the incident.
A federal official met with the Bomb Squad on Thursday, and Hoffman Yager remains in custody at the Sweetwater County Detention Center, charged with Breach of Peace, as the investigation continues.
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