The popcorn machine was blamed for "gunshots" supposedly heard at a movie theater that led to its evacuation in Boca Raton, Florida, on Saturday, the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel reported.
Boca Raton is 12 miles from Parkland, Florida, where 17 people, most teenage students, were killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February in one of the deadliest school mass shootings in U.S. history.
Authorities were called to the Cinemark Theater on Saturday evening on a report of gunfire, prompting police to evacuate the multiplex, the Sun Sentinel wrote.
The Palm Beach Post reported that police cleared the building about 5 p.m. and started its investigation.
Esmeralda Romero, who was at the theater when the fire alarm went off, told the Palm Beach Post that she was not initially worried about it until police showed up with guns in hand.
"I thought it was just someone burned the popcorn," Romero told the Post. "Then the police showed up with their guns drawn. Management then came out and told us to leave."
During the course of an investigation, police discovered that the theater's popcorn machine apparently set off a fire alarm that got movie-goers scared and someone reported "shots fired" to police, Boca Raton police said, per the newspaper.
Authorities explained the incident on Twitter.
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