MISSOURI CITY, Mo. — Kansas City Police Department’s Bomb and Arson Unit safely detonated an explosive on Tuesday that was left in a man’s yard in rural Clay County.

The tense situation caused authorities to evacuate a neighborhood and shut down a set of train tracks for hours in the small town of Missouri City, Missouri.

Investigators said they’re not looking at this as a prank, but rather as a malicious targeted action.

The call came in at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday with a man telling deputies he had picked up an explosive he found in his yard, placed it in a box, and left it near the train tracks past the intersection of Gano and Water streets.

But when the bomb squad arrived, they found there was no explosive in the box. The man admitted he must have misplaced it.

“That’s an interesting mix-up. Which box do you have?” said Johanna Davis, who lives down the street.

Neighbors haven’t received a lot of information about what happened.

“Just ‘explosive.’ That’s a wide range of information, so I’m not 100% on that,” she said, commenting on the small amount of information she’s been made aware of.

“A pipe bomb is what I heard,” said Avery Miller, another neighbor who was evacuated.

According to the Clay County Sheriff’s Office, the man who called about the explosive brought the wrong box into his home. Authorities brought it back outside.

“I’d be stressed out in that situation. Honestly, I would. I know they shut down the train tracks, too. They had to stop trains for a bit,” Miller said.

Many neighbors said it’s lucky the explosive did not go off when it was first moved.

“I talked to police when they left about what all happened. They said they diffused it and all that over the tracks. It was a scary situation,” Miller added.

Davis said she talked about the situation with her kids, concerned there has been no resolution to the explosive mystery.

“I’m pretty open and honest. In general, we communicate a lot in our family, so if we’re expecting anything we can talk about it beforehand, and if anything shows up that’s unexpected, hopefully they’re a little suspicious,” Davis said.

Authorities haven’t released any information on a potential suspect.