A major police operation was underway Wednesday evening in La Cité-Limoilou, in Quebec, due to a suspicious package near the Gare du Palais.
The event began around 5.30pm, when a man contacted the authorities because of a suspicious package – which he suspected was an explosive device – left in his car.
“The information we have is credible enough for us to judge that the fears are well founded,” explains Dominic Paré, officer at the Quebec police monitoring and operational support center.
A wide perimeter was therefore installed in the evening around the parking lot located at the corner of rue Saint-Paul and boulevard Jean-Lesage to prevent people from approaching it.
At the center of it was a Mercedes-Benz SUV similar to the G-Class model, a vehicle that costs around $200,000 new.
Photo QMI Agency, Marc Vallières
Important deployment
Sûreté du Québec (SQ) bomb disposal experts were requested to assist in approaching the package in question.
In total, about a dozen officers from the Service de police de la Ville de Québec (SPVQ) and the SQ went to the scene.
Rue Saint-Paul was closed to traffic between boulevard Jean-Lesage and rue Abraham Martin, as was rue de la Gare-du-Palais.
At the time of this writing, the package had still not been recovered and no one was injured during the response.