Peanut the Squirrel‘s supporters are making it clear they’re pissed NY State officials confiscated and euthanized the animal … by coordinating multiple bomb threats on state government offices.
The Department of Environmental Conservation is one of 2 agencies that conducted last week’s raid at Mark Longo‘s home in upstate NY’s Chemung County — but DEC offices all over the state have now been evacuated due to the bomb threats.
Sources with the NYPD tell TMZ … there was a bomb threat claiming an explosive device was planted inside a DEC office in Long Island City … and, cops believe the threat is related to the Peanut the Squirrel case.
Officials said they believed the bomb threats, none of which turned out to be legit, were intentionally coordinated. At least 3,000 DEC employees at multiple offices statewide cleared out while NY State Troopers searched the buildings.
Another bomb threat targeted the DEC office in Buffalo … and, cops there tell us the Buffalo PD K9 unit searched the premises and cleared the area. BPD says they are actively investigating the incident in coordination with the New York State Police and “assessing any potential connections to similar threats reported across the state.”
DEC employees have been instructed to work from home Monday and on Tuesday … which is also election day.
As we reported, the DEC and the Chemung County Health Dept. took Peanut and Fred the Raccoon from Longo’s home last week, because he didn’t have the proper license to have domesticated wild animals.
During the raid, officials claimed Peanut bit one of the agents … so they had to euthanize the squirrel, as well as the raccoon, in order to conduct rabies testing. It’s unclear if either animal really did have rabies.
For his part, Longo told us Peanut has bitten him a few times over the 7 years he had him, and he’s never contracted rabies.