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`Pipe bomb' scare creates quite a buzz

Stuck to a 10-inch plastic pipe and covered in black electrical tape, the device sure looked like a pipe bomb. Especially since a little remote control was attached to it by a thin wire.

But a woman named Sue didn't take the time to read the words "Swedish erotica" on the remote when she spotted it atop a toilet in the men's room of Coffee Time Donuts.

It was just after 8 a.m. and she was about to clean the bathroom before she left work for the day.

Instead, Sue fled and called police.

The police officers who rushed to the shop didn't notice the label, either.

They just pushed open the bathroom door, spotted the wire on a pipe and called the bomb squad.

Then they evacuated the shop and neighbouring buildings and shut down traffic on Kipling Ave. south of Bloor St. in the middle of morning rush hour.

Constable Ken Evans doesn't blame the woman for mistaking a vibrator for a pipe bomb.

It took about 40 minutes for Evans and his expert crew to get downtown from their office at Highway 401 and Leslie St., and less than five to figure out that it wasn't a bomb.

"When I realized the pipe was hollow, obviously we knew we had to have some kind of hoax," Evans explained.

Evans and his partner pulled off the black tape, revealing the chrome cylinder.

Then they had a good laugh.

"My partner didn't have a clue what it was, so it backfired on me, because I was the one who saw it and said `Oh, I know what that is,'" Evans said, adding that he's now the butt of office jokes.

The Toronto police bomb squad gets about 165 calls a year, about 150 of them hoaxes. Evans said this is the strangest he's seen in 14 years on the squad. Aside from telling his buddies about it, he said he's not going bother pursuing it any further.