By Los Altos

Photo by Charles Halleck, Special to the Town Crier

Town Crier Staff Report

Los Altos Police closed off the City Plaza and a portion of State Street in front of Wells Fargo Bank for more than an hour Friday afternoon after a resident reported two “suspicious packages” lying on the sidewalk.

Bomb investigators from the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department determined that the two packages were sandbags.

Police said they called the bomb squad because the bags were located between two banks and officers were unable to identify with certainty what each bag contained.

A police spokesman said 99.9 percent of the time unknown packages are determined to be harmless. Police calls the county bomb squad to investigate suspicious packages as a matter of protocol, he said.

Suspicious bags

Police said a woman leaving a downtown beauty salon reported the green and blue bags at 11 a.m.

About a half dozen police taped off the area and guarded the plaza until the bomb squad arrived from San Jose about 45 minutes later.

Bomb squad responds

Sheriff’s investigators used special equipment to verify that the packages were not bombs.

Los Altos police said some onlookers told them that they had seen the bags there since the start of the week.

Police said the bags could have been left behind from the Los Altos Arts & Wine Festival, which took place downtown July 13-14.

Police reopened the plaza at 1:15 p.m.