Editor’s note: This article has been amended as more information became available.
An apparent firecracker explosion at the Burbank Commons Apartments near campus caused a scare among residents and a response from the East Baton Rouge Sheriffs Office on Thursday night.”There was no shooting, and cops were out there for another situation, and while we were there, someone thought it would be funny and set off a firework,” a Sergeant with the Sheriff’s Office who would not give her name told The Daily Reveille on the phone. Word of possible gunfire in that area quickly spread after 8 p.m. on social networking sites, like Facebook and the LSU sports message board TigerDroppings.”What was really weird was when we went outside there were already like 10 cops cars driving around and police on feet talking to people,” said biochemistry senior Robert Oubre, who lives there. “We’re pretty confident it was a firecracker because it smelled like one of those big ones you put in a tube. As soon as it went off, I looked out my window saw the smoke and could see people going out on their balconies and going to look from all the other buildings.”Some students reported seeing burned portions of sidewalk where a firecracker may have ignited. Others also reported seeing officers use flashlights to search several vehicles in both the Commons and the Crescent parking lots.Caitlyn Blanchard, a biology sophomore who lives in the Crescent apartments, said she saw officers looking in a “sketchy” car’s trunk at that apartment. She said it looked “like a drug bust” and added she heard no information about a firework exploding in the area. Brandi Monjure, a communication studies junior who lives in the next-door Sterling University Crescent said her boyfriend was coming to visit her and saw a commotion in the parking lot. “He saw two cop cars in the Burbank Commons parking lot and another four or five in ours.” Monjure said. “As he was walking, he heard the noise, and when he turned around, he saw firecrackers in the sky.” But Jane Berteau, a business sophomore who lives in the Commons, said she had been locked outside her apartment for several hours before 8 p.m. and did not hear any explosions. She said she saw police cars in the Commons parking lot near the front entrance, where officers were looking into car windows with flashlights. The spokeswoman from the Sheriff’s Office refused to provide further details, and said a public information officer would not be available to provide such information until Friday morning.
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