Police shut down Bellmore Post Office over cyanide scare

Updated: 2:30 p.m. Nassau County Police and the U.S. Marshals Service cordoned off the Bellmore Post Office and surrounding streets between 10 and 11 a.m. today, shutting down Merrick Road for several blocks to the east and west. According to police, a woman who U.S. marshals were tracking turned up at the mail facility with a bottle marked "sodium cyanide," a potentially deadly poison.

Nassau County Police Lt. Detective Kevin Smith said in a news conference that authorities would test the bottle, and if it turned out to be cyanide, U.S. marshals and other officials at the scene would have to be detoxified. At around 2 p.m., police said their initial tests of the bottle came back negative for cyanide, but that the substance would be sent to the FBI and health officials for further testing. Meanwhile, the suspect and four officials, including three marshals and a medical technician, were “washed down” and sent to Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow.

Authorities said that the Arkansas woman, who was arrested, identified herself as Wendy Cavanagh, but that the name was likely an alias. Smith said that she goes by many. Officials also said that she was wanted on several priors, including fraud and identity theft.

Smith said that marshals had followed the woman for some time, and she was scheduled to pick up a package with clothes and costume jewelry at the Bellmore Post Office on Friday. Marshals planned to apprehend the woman at the facility, but upon inspecting her car there, they discovered the bottle in question. In an initial news conference, Smith said that the bottle contained a "crystallized powder substance," and that the woman's car was stolen from Texas.

"What otherwise would have been a routine apprehension turned out to be much, much more," Smith said.

Officers from the Nassau County Fire Marshal’s Hazardous Materials unit were immediately called in and told to “suit up” before entering the post office grounds. Ambulances were dispatched “forthwith.” By noon, the fire marshal’s haz-mat command center, a large mobile trailer, had arrived at the post office, which was surrounded by police and fire officials.

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