Employees find bomb outside Wal-Mart

BOONE, N.C. -- Surveillance video from outside the Wal-Mart in Boone shows someone jogging toward the front of the store, staying briefly while he is believed to be planting a homemade bomb, and fleeing on foot, police say.

Boone police released images from the surveillance video Monday afternoon. They have not yet identified the person in the video.

Police say they worry that whoever left the bomb outside Wal-Mart early Sunday morning could do the same thing again somewhere else.

Police believe the person shown here planted a bomb outside the Boone Wal-Mart on Sunday. Click here to see full-size images.

They evacuated the store after an employee found the device near the front doors around 5:40 a.m., about an hour and a half before opening time.

The device looked suspicious enough that store employees called police.

"An employee walked to the front entrance, saw something and smelled smoke," Boone police investigator Mark Stevens told WCNC Sunday.

Det. Stevens wouldn’t describe the device, but a Boone newspaper said the bomb consisted of a copper center piece, two butane tanks and flash powder. WCNC's calls to the Wilkes County Special Operations bomb squad, which detonated the device, were not returned Sunday afternoon.

Det. Stevens told WCNC that the device was indeed explosive, and not a fake.

"It was a dangerous device," said Stevens. Despite that, no one was injured in the incident, and the store was not damaged, Stevens said.

Officers searched the store and the property but found no more devices, and allowed the store to open about five hours after the device was found.

Shoppers wondered who would do something like that in a small town like Boone.

"That’s really unheard of here in the middle of nowhere," said Al Brown.

Daniel Clark echoed his remarks.

"That's kind of scary with it being such a small town and such a small area," said Clark.

Shoppers WCNC talked to said that if someone wanted to harm a lot of people, they picked the right place.

"You could knock out a lot of people at one time," commented Seth Johnson.

Police have asked the State Bureau of Investigation and the FBI to help with the case. They are concerned something like this could happen again, but with greater injuries.

"This could be somebody who needs some help," said Det. Stevens. "We'd like to get this person into custody and deal with what's happened."

Anyone with information is asked to call the Boone Police Dept. at 828-268-6900.

(WCNC's Diana Rugg contributed to this report.)