On Twitter, it quickly became the #terrortunnel – an allegedly sophisticated underground installation found dangerously close to a sports stadium where major events of this year’s Pan American Games will be held.
But in the eyes of local officials and police, who discovered and excavated the mystery chamber last month, it’s just a baffling hole in the ground built for no discernable or especially “nefarious” reason.
“Looking at it objectively, somebody has dug a tunnel,” Mark Saunders, deputy chief of police, told reporters at a press conference on Tuesday morning. “There’s no criminal offence for that.”
All the same, he admitted, “it’s not your everyday find.”
Local police have appealed to the public for help in solving the mystery of who built the bunker and why, but downplayed suggestions of any connection to terrorist activity.
Saunders said that the local force had consulted other agencies “right across the world” and found no reports of similar tunnels elsewhere.
“At no point in time was there anything that indicated there was a public safety issue,” Saunders said. “I’m the executive officer in charge of the Pan Am Games and I can tell you point-blank that all of our venues have a very robust security mechanism in place. This thing would have been an eyesore to us, we would have located this.
“My concern is that I don’t know why this is here,” he added.
But the deputy chief did suggest that the mystery diggers could still be active in local parklands. “So if you’re walking your dogs in a wooded area, just be more cognizant of your environment,” he advised. “If you see something suspicious, give us a call.”
Newly released photographs gave a more complete picture of the bunker, which was built three metres underground in an isolated woodland located in the north-west corner of this Canadian city, near York University and the Rexall Centre tennis stadium. Less than a metre wide but tall enough for a man to stand in, it stretched 10 metres in length.
Its sides and roof were sturdily braced with plywood and heavy lumber, and a Honda generator was found in a nearby pit, connected by a covered cable to what police described as “moisture-resistant lighting” in the tunnel. Police also discovered a sump pump used to draw water from the chamber and concluded that it had been used recently. “It was very comfortable inside,” Saunders said.
Although the entrance to the cryptlike cavern was hidden, scattered debris and a large pile of excavated dirt nearby suggested it was less than perfectly surreptitious. Nor was there anything ominous about its orientation, according to Saunders. “It wouldn’t have been nefarious to the point where it would have come up covertly anywhere,” he said.
“It would have just gone through a hill, and that would have been it.”
The bunker’s location next to a residential neighbourhood that has long been plagued by gang violence led to speculation that it was intended to be an underground drug laboratory. Forensic tests of artifacts found on the site are still under way, according to police, but there is so far no evidence of there being drug-related activity on the site.
The investigation did show the existence of two semicircular excavations on either side of the tunnel, facing one another near its northern end and creating a churchlike, cruciform plan.
Equally intriguing was the discovery of a Catholic rosary with a Remembrance Day poppy attached, found hanging on a wall inside the chamber. But Saunders pointedly refused to speculate as to its meaning.
“This was found inside the tunnel itself and it was nailed on the wall,” he said, displaying a close-up picture of the rosary and poppy.
“What does that tell you?” a reporter asked.
“That tells me that this was nailed inside the tunnel on a wall,” the officer responded.
The mystery deepens.
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