Police seemed dumbfounded by Thursday morning's shooting of two men at a North Hollywood synagogue. Officers at the scene of the shooting at the Adat Yeshurun Valley Sephardic synagogue in the 12400 block of Sylvan St. picked up a 17-year-old boy who loosely matched the description of the shooter. But by early afternoon they let him go.

The teenager was questioned and returned to his school, Lt. Alan Hamilton told KTLA News. That left authorities at the scene, who had established a perimeter in an attempt to catch the shooter but later called off the active search, without much to go on in the attack, which hospitalized the victims with non-life-threatening wounds to their legs.

“We're looking at all possibilities at this point,” Hamilton said.

Without a suspect in sight, Jewish leaders were uneasy this afternoon. Police put area synagogues on alert. And a bomb squad was at the historic Wilshire Temple at 3663 Wilshire Blvd. in Koreatown to check out a suspicious object.

Police, however, are declining to categorically call the North Hollywood attack, which occurred just before 6:30 a.m. in the parking structure of the synagogue, a hate crime.

“We have no evidence whatsoever that this is a hate crime,” Hamilton told KTLA. “… But we can't eliminate the possibility.”

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