Sheboygan Falls Q Mart, residents evacuated Sunday

The Q Mart on Fond du Lac Ave in Sheboygan Falls was evacuated early Sunday morning after a suspicious item was reported near the front entrance. The Milwaukee County Bomb Squad and the Milwaukee Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives responded to the scene, and the bomb squad used a mechanical robot to disassemble the device, which they say was an explosive-type device containing explosive powder.

Officials say residents in the immediate area were also evacuated, as a safety precaution. Norm and Diane Worm were watching TV around 6:30 Sunday morning when police arrived and evacuated them. They said they assumed it was a gas leak.

The device was first spotted by a regular Q Mart customer around 5:15 Sunday morning. The man didn't want to be identified, but said he saw the device laying in the parking lot among a pile of trash. "It looked like a coffee cup. I found some garbage in the street, and put it on top of the garbage can," the man said.

John Horzen saw the object on top of the garbage can when he stopped by the Q Mart for his daily cup of coffee around 6:15 a.m. He says his curiosity led him to take a closer look at the object. "(It looked like) a plastic drinking cup with a handle on it, and it had three sticks in it rolled up. They looked like firecrackers and there was a fuse sticking out at the top," Horzen said.

The all-clear came around 11:00 Sunday morning. There was no explosion, and no one was hurt. The incident remains under investigation.