Scary moments in a suburban Littleton shopping center Tuesday afternoon when police responded to a call that an active pipe bomb was on the ground behind the Safeway at South Broadway and West Mineral Avenue.

The bomb had a timer on it, but the timer was broken. Littleton police said though the bomb was live, it may have failed because of that.

It’s unknown how much damage the bomb would have caused had it gone off. But the shopping mall – which has a Safeway, a pet supply shop, a hardware store, a massage space, and several restaurants – is generally busy during the day time hours.

Police got the call at 12:36 p.m. from a contractor who worked at Safeway and found the bomb as he was doing an inspection. The Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Bomb Squad brought a robot and two bomb sniffing dogs to help retrieve the device.

The area was roped off and several law enforcement vehicles kept watch during tense moments as a robot the size of a go-cart scoured the back loading area of the Safeway and located the bomb. Two of Arapahoe County’s bomb-sniffing dogs, Rex and Nuke, helped with the search and the device was eventually detonated at a separate location.

Littleton Police spokesperson Sheera Poelman said surveillance footage from the building, which is trained on the back loading dock, should help police find who placed the bomb there and when. They are hoping that a church, which backs up to the shopping center, also had cameras.

Poelman said that because of the size and structure of the building and the location of the bomb, the Safeway and an adjacent gas station were not evacuated. People filled up their cars and shopped for groceries while the operation was going on.

The entire incident from the time police got the call to when they detonated the bomb took around two hours.