LITTLE ROCK — A Conway man was arrested in Kansas Monday in connection with a threat that hazardous material had been left in a Junction City, Kan., hotel room.
Christopher Spence, 50, was ultimately stopped and arrested on Interstate 70 near Topeka. His truck was searched for hazardous materials, causing the highway to be shut down for several hours.
Junction City police chief Tim Brown said in a statement that the investigation started about 10:30 a.m. when authorities received a call from a man who advised hazardous material had been intentionally placed in a Ramada Inn hotel room and that "the FBI was to be contacted."
“You are in a situation that if it came back negative on both the motel room and the vehicle, it seemed like a waste of time,” said Highway Patrol Capt. Steven Zeller. “On the other side of it, if we had an explosion or release of hazardous materials into the atmosphere and exposed motorists driving by, that would be horrendous. We decided to err on the side of public safety.”
Crews immediately evacuated the hotel and set up a perimeter around it. Authorities also began looking for the suspect vehicle after developing a description: a green pickup with anti-government statements on its side.
Kansas Highway Patrol troopers stopped the truck on I-70 and arrested the driver, identified as Spence.
Brown wrote that the hotel was closed off until the room in question was "rendered safe." It wasn't clear from the statement what, if anything, was found inside or if any materials were recovered from the truck.
The interstate was closed from around 1:15 p.m. and reopened around 10:30 p.m. after investigators with the Highway Patrol, FBI and other agencies determined there was nothing dangerous in Spence’s vehicle.
He was being held on $100,000 bond after being charged with aggravated criminal threat. His case has been assigned to the public defender’s office in Junction City, which declined to comment Tuesday when contacted by The Associated Press.
Information for this article was contributed by The Associated Press.