Police were searching for this man.
Police were searching for this man.
The search for a man who brought a gun into the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center in downtown Detroit on Monday, triggering an evacuation, continued on Tuesday.
Sgt. Michael Woody, a spokesman for the Detroit Police Department, said the man in a photo who was suspected of being the gun owner, was cleared after being tracked down Monday afternoon.
The man, whose identity was not released, answered questions at his lawyer's office and had a "pretty sound alibi," Woody said.
The incident began after someone passed through security Monday morning and went into the building with what appeared to be a gun in some type of carry bag. An x-ray machine detected the gun, but by the time it was discovered, the person was gone.
Authorities responded by evacuating the building and searching every floor for the suspect. The building is a gun-free zone, which make it a felony to carry a gun inside. At the time, authorities thought the person with the gun may have left the building during the mass evacuation.
On Twitter, police posted a photo of a man they believed was the owner of the gun, but that apparently was not the case.
Woody said Detroit Police and the Wayne County Sheriff's Office were meeting Tuesday morning with the private security firm, Securitas, which runs the security points in city hall, to see what can be done to avoid a similar situation.
He said the department has been working for months on a plan to add uniformed, off-duty officers to the building to embellish security.
Anyone with information regarding the gun in city hall should call the Detroit Police at (313) 596-1616.
