By FOX40 News

UPDATE (5:30 p.m.) — The California Highway Patrol has completed sweeps of both the annex construction site and the Capitol building, and both are clear and were deemed safe.

The Capitol will reopen to the public Monday, and CHP said it will continue investigating the threat.

(FOX40.COM) — The California State Capitol Annex construction site was evacuated Friday morning as the California Highway Patrol investigated a handwritten threat.

Turner Construction, a company working at the annex site, notified the highway patrol of a handwritten threat on a wall at 9:45 a.m., Chief Doug Lyons said Friday afternoon.

Investigators do not believe the threat was legitimate, but Lyons said CHP is taking it seriously and sweeping the construction site with officers and K-9s.

Because of the nature of a construction site — tools, debris and boxes spread across multiple floors — Lyons said it will likely take several hours to complete a slow and methodical search.

Officers are also looking through surveillance footage to determine who wrote the threat, a process Lyons said could take days.

Work crews were asked to leave the construction site “out of an abundance of caution,” and Senate leadership asked staffers to leave the Capitol building itself and to work from home the rest of the day. The Legislative Office Building and the “swing space” were not affected by the situation.

The threat comes a month after the close of the 2026 legislative session. That means most if not all lawmakers were not at the building Friday as they and some staffers are back home in their districts during the recess.

“At this point we have no reason to believe the threat is credible, however CHP is on-site assessing the threat and conducting inspections of the area,” Erika Contreras, Secretary of the Senate, said in a memo shared with FOX40.