PROVIDENCE. R.I. -- The Rhode Island State Police are investigating calls placed to the Peter Pan Bus Lines' call center in Springfield, Mass., on Saturday morning that prompted both Rhode Island and Massachusetts state police to search two buses for potential bombs.
Nothing was found, and the buses were sent on their way -- one to New York City and the other to Albany, N.Y., Rhode Island State Police Maj. Michael J. Winquist said. But the police are working to trace the calls.
The incident began around 11 a.m. Saturday, when a call center employee answered the phone and heard a message straight out of a Hollywood script.
A recorded loop played over the telephone line, about a bomb on a bus threatening that if the bus traveled slower than 50 miles per hour the bomb would go off -- the plot line from the movie "Speed." About three minutes later, another call of the same nature came in, and the dispatcher asked, "Where?" Winquist said. "All they said was Providence."
Peter Pan and the police sprang into action, he said. After determining that two buses had left Providence Saturday morning, the state police stationed troopers in Exeter near Route 5, intercepting one bus and evacuating it. Meanwhile, Massachusetts troopers stopped the other bus on the Massachusetts Turnpike in Chicopee, Winquist said.
The Rhode Island state fire marshal's office and the Massachusetts State Police bomb squad determined there were no explosives aboard either bus, he said.