At 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, a loud explosion sent students at the downtown campus of Miami Dade College scurrying for cover. Panicked calls came into campus security: Was it a bomb? A Molotov cocktail? Al Qaeda? Violent FTAA protesters? Actually, it was the city of Miami Police Bomb Squad blowing up a five-gallon can of latex paint. Color: eggshell with a touch of pearl.
''In hindsight, you might say we overreacted,'' police spokesman Delrish Moss said. ``But if it had been a bomb and had blown up a city block, then we'd all be asking why no one did anything.''
It started when Florida Highway Patrol troopers said they spotted two people slamming a car door and running away from a car parked in front of Miami Subs at 300 NE Second Ave., across the street from the college.
The troopers looked in the car and saw a suspicious canister, according to Moss.
Officers from the Department of Homeland Security and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms cordoned off a four-block area and kept people away from the college and the car, a white 1997 Mercury hatchback.
Police then smashed the rear windows and drilled through the doors and the trunk, destroying the the car's fuel line and electrical system.
Emily Vogel, 24, and her boyfriend, Juan Maristany, 27, said they had parked their car there to photograph a nearby anti-tobacco protest.
Vogel is a senior at Florida International University majoring in photography. Maristany is a former student who works at Williams Sonoma in Miami Beach. The day before, they had painted a wall in the FIU gallery as a backdrop for Vogel's upcoming senior show. They still had the paint can in the car.
The bomb squad removed it and blew it up, right next to the car. At 1 p.m., Vogel and Maristany returned to the car.
''We were shocked. The car was ruined,'' said Maristany. ``If we were suspicious, why didn't they just ask us to unlock the car and talk to us?''
The police said the couple was gone by the time they looked in the car. Besides, said Moss, the police ''smelled something.'' And, when they ran the tag, they saw the tag was registered to a man in his 60s. ''My father,'' said Vogel, who now has an attorney from the ACLU and plans to make a claim against the city.
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