Silver Lake Bomb Scare: More Details Emerge

More details are emerging about what went on Wednesday afternoon during the bomb scare at the Mixville Shopping Center in Silver Lake.

A Los Angeles Police Department Bomb Squad robot blew up what police called "a container" after police and firefighters evacuated nearby stores and locked down the immediate area.

Sylvia Verdusco, who runs Silverlake Beauty and Supply in the mall, said she first noticed something unusual when firefighters asked her to move her car.

She stepped outside into the parking lot and saw a "pot" under a blue car in a space adjacent to the wall along Glendale.

She also saw firefighters and police cordoning off the parking lot and nearby streets.

"We were very scared. We thought it was going to explode," she said.

Verdusco moved her car to a street above the shoping mall outside the police perimeter, which stretched from Silver Lake Boulevard along Glendale and down Fletcher to Riverside Drive.

She then went back inside her shop, until firefighters asked her to leave the area.

"I remember 9/11," she said. "I said, 'Let's go,'" to the woman working in the shop with her, Arax Shakhualadyan.

Verdusco locked up and went to a funeral.

She returned around 3 p.m. to see that the lockdown of the area had ended.

"We lost business, it was empty. We didn't have any customers when we came back," she said.

She said both she and her colleague had headaches all day because of the stress.

Siroun Miloyan also had to leave her dry-cleaning business, Silver Glen Cleaners, located next to Starbuck's during the scare.

She later heard from several disappointed customers, who had tried to reach the shop and couldn't get into the area.

Miloyan said she didn't get a chance to see what the suspicious item under the car looked like.

But her vehicle was parked next to it, however, and police took her keys and moved it for her.

Miloyan also said Starbuck's, next to the cleaner's, was probably the last business in the mall to reopen, around 5 p.m.

Detectives were at the shopping center Thursday morning interviewing merchants.

According to Verdusco, they were especially interested in whether there was anyone acting unusually in the area just before first responders received a call about a "suspicious package" under a car.

LAPD spokesman Richard French told Patch that police responded to four other "suspicious package" scares on Wednesday--in Venice, in a UCLA parking structure, in the Harbor area and in the San Fernando Valley. 

If you have information about this incident or others, you can reach out anonymously at the LAPD's iWatch Web site.