A suspicious package that appeared Saturday night in the swanky Los Angeles neighborhood of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin prompted lengthy street closures and a sizable response by local and federal authorities, including members of the Los Angeles Police Department’s bomb squad.

But the bomb scare was a false alarm, police told local media, after the package was discovered to contain only horse manure.

A large box, covered in holiday wrapping paper and addressed to Mnuchin, was left outside the home of one of his Bel Air neighbors Saturday evening, ABC 7 News reported.

The package was labeled as being from “the American people,” according to the news station. Secret Service agents and Los Angeles police, including bomb-squad officers, soon swarmed the area to investigate the package.

In video of the scene taken by an NBC Los Angeles helicopter, an officer can be seen opening the box, dumping out its contents and spreading a dark, unevenly clumped substance across the ground.

The substance ended up being horse manure, police said. And, according to aerial footage, there was a lot of it.

Afterward, at least three officers could be seen standing around the pile, shining flashlights on the manure and moving it around with their feet, presumably to check whether anything else might be hidden in it.

The LAPD told local media on Saturday that the Secret Service is taking over the investigation. The Secret Service said Sunday that it was “aware of this matter” but referred all questions back to Los Angeles police.

Related Stories