Staffers Return to Longworth After Evacuation
Updated: 6:34 p.m.Staffers were allowed back into the Longworth House Office Building at about 5:40 p.m. Wednesday, two hours after Capitol Police evacuated the building because of a suspicious package on the seventh floor.Capitol Police spokeswoman Sgt. Kimberly Schneider said the department has removed the package from the building and is bringing it to a federal facility in Quantico, Va., to be “rendered safe.—The Virginia State Police will help the Capitol Police deliver the package in a motorcade, she added.Officers found the package at about 12:20 p.m., and the Hazardous Devices Section conducted tests that were “inconclusive,— prompting an evacuation at about 3:30 p.m. Schneider did not give details on what happened in the intervening three hours.“Out of an abundance of caution, USCP has determined that the safest course of action is to evacuate Longworth and relocate occupants to Cannon until the package is safely removed from Longworth,— Schneider said in an e-mail earlier Wednesday. The Capitol Police respond to several suspicious packages a day, almost always without incident. Rarely is a building evacuated.