Federal officials are looking into whether the employee who reported an explosion at Northeastern University may have lied to investigators and staged the incident, law enforcement officials said Wednesday. Investigators found inconsistencies in the employee’s account and became skeptical because his injuries did not match wounds typically consistent with an explosion, an official said. Officials could not discuss details of the investigation publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. A Northeastern employee said late Tuesday the hard plastic case exploded on the campus in Boston, causing minor injuries, according to authorities. In an interview with The Boston Globe, the employee denied organizing the explosion, calling the event “very traumatic.” “I didn’t direct this. No way, shape or form … they need to catch the guy who did this,” he told the newspaper. He did not immediately respond to an email Wednesday from The Associated Press. The case contained a strange note that poked fun at virtual reality and also referred to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, a law enforcement official said. No explosives were found and they do not believe the package was sent through the US Postal Service, the official said. The official described the case as a “pelican-style” case. Pelican is a company that makes hard cases designed to protect sensitive equipment. A spokesman for the FBI’s Boston office declined to comment Wednesday, saying the investigation is “still very active and fluid.” Northeastern said in a message posted on its website Wednesday that the campus is safe. “Events like the incident that took place on our Boston campus last night can create or increase anxiety for many of us,” said the post, attributed to Provost David Madigan and Chancellor Kenneth Henderson. “We would like to underscore what was shared with our community last night: Multiple law enforcement agencies have found the campus to be safe and secure.” The campus opened normally for classes and other activities on Wednesday. Counseling and other support services were made available for students, faculty and staff. Despite assurances from the school, many students are still worried. “Every time I go into a classroom or dining hall or anything in general, people are just talking about what’s going on and what happened yesterday,” student Lisbeth Martinez said Wednesday. “A lot of people are still worried and obviously scared about the situation.” The package delivered to Holmes Hall was detonated shortly after 7pm on Tuesday when a staff member opened it, the university said in a statement. The employee, a 45-year-old man, was taken to hospital with minor injuries to his hand, police said. No names were released. Boston’s bomb squad defused a second package near the city’s Museum of Fine Arts, which is located near Northeastern’s campus. Holmes Hall is home to the university’s Immersive Media Labs, which according to its website include technologies for designing, developing and exploring virtual worlds. It is also home to the creative writing program and the women’s, gender, and sexuality studies program. Northeastern is a private university in downtown Boston with approximately 16,000 undergraduate students. The case marks one of the first major scares in Boston since 2013, when two bombs planted near the finish line of the Boston Marathon killed three spectators and injured more than 260 others. Associated Press writers Alanna Durkin Richer and Mark Pratt in Boston contributed to this report.
