Idaho

Jar full of mercury broke outside Boise pawn shop. Officials seek man who helped clean it up

By Katy Moeller

December 17, 2018 01:21 PM

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A baby jar full of mercury broke in the parking lot of First National Pawn on Monday morning, and someone tried to help clean it up before firefighters arrived, according to a spokeswoman for the Boise Fire Department.

The incident was reported at about 10:30 a.m. Monday at the pawn shop located at 919 N. Orchard St. The pawn shop is closed while Boise Fire investigates and cleans up.

The woman who had the jar of mercury planned to properly dispose of it today, said Boise Fire spokeswoman Char Jackson. But before that happened, it was inadvertently dropped in the parking lot of the pawn shop.

A man who doesn’t work at the shop stopped to assist the woman in cleaning it up. Fire officials want to be sure he didn’t have a toxic exposure to the mercury, so Jackson put out a news release asking for that person to contact Ada County’s non-emergency dispatch at 208-377-6790.

“It’s just basically out of caution that we want to find this individual,” Jackson said. They also want to find out whether rags were used to clean and, if so, how those were disposed of.

Katy Moeller

Katy Moeller has worked at The Idaho Statesman for 13 years. She’s a generalist, an investigative reporter and a feature writer who has been on the breaking news team for a decade. She was Idaho Press Club’s 2016 Print Reporter of the Year.

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