Harrisonville, Missouri A portion of downtown Harrisonville has reopened after an old military munition was found inside a building that was under construction. The shutdown lasted several hours as the Kansas City Police Department's Bomb and Arson Squad evaluated the device.
EOD from Fort Riley were called in to confirm the ordnance was a WWII-era grenade. It was safely removed and disposed of by the team.
Virginia, Minnesota The Virginia Police Department was called in after contractors discovered military ordnance in the basement wall of Arrowhead Bar. Police responded to evacuate the area, and the Duluth Minnesota Air National Guard were deployed to inspect and safely remove the mortar round.
In a statement, Virginia Police Chief Nicole Mattson reported that the munition was identified as a WWII Japanese mortar. She did not indicate why it may have ended up inside the building.
After the item was safely removed, the area was reopened. The Police Department thanked the National Guard unit for their assistance.
Dubuque, Iowa The Dubuque Fire Department responded to a home after reports of a potential UXO find. Melissa Williams reported that her husband came across the device while digging a hole for a new fence post in their backyard.
"I looked it up online, and it said it was like an aerial dart from World War II or whatever. So I sent a picture to my father and he said, no that's, you need to call the police on that one," she said.
According to news release from the fire department, they were called to the home for "what is believed to be an unexploded WWII-era mortar round/ordnance." Approximately 25 homes in the neighborhood were evacuated while explosives experts examined the ordnance. Officials confirmed that UXO had been removed from the area so it could be safely detonated.
Moselle, Mississippi An 11-year old boy's birthday was made even more special after a visit from a U.S. Army EOD Team. The Jones County Sheriff's Department (JCSD) responded to the scene after the 11-year-old pulled a suspicious item from the mud by a creek near his home.
The fifth grader said, "I thought it was a pipe, but I grabbed it and I found a missile from Russia." He wanted to keep it, but his alarmed parents wisely notified authorities.
Once on the scene, JCSD contacted the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, who dispatched the EOD Team from Fort Polk, LA. The device turned out to be a spent training round from an M29 bazooka.
Central Province, Kenya Kenyan police responded to settle a dispute between villagers in central Kenya over whether an object they found was an overgrown root vegetable or ordnance. The verdict was reached once Police arrived and identified the item as a mortar.
Port Talbot, south Wales Friends 'mudlarking' (the process of looking through earth - most typically river mud - for items of value that have been washed up or buried) in the Afan Forest made an explosive discovery when found a UXO item.
The 27-year-old woman described the incident to reporters, "There is a part of the land that has been excavated so I thought there might be some old bottles or something in there. I was looking over the edge when I spotted it. It had white rust on it which is galvanized steel. I was walking towards my partner sort of saying 'look what I've found' when I realized what it was."
She went on to say, when the two suspected that it may be ordnance, the pair informed South Wales Police. The police contacted the bomb squad and experts detonated the device on nearby forestery land.
Auckland, New Zealand Potato screening at a New Zealand chip factory led to a bomb squad response after night shift worker Richard Teurukura noticed a strange-looking potato on the conveyor belt. Upon further examination, the suspicious spud turned out to be a grenade.
Trefriw, North Wales Rental cottage owner Dave Dew is thankful to be rid of one uninvited guest. He was shocked to find a WWII munition in the garden while preparing to build a summerhouse.
Dew frequently finds scrap metal on the property, which was once a blacksmiths, but this was a first. He scraped his spade against something metallic between old tree stumps and immediately called police once he saw what it was.
He also sent a picture of the suspect item which was forwarded to an Army EOD Unit. Two soldiers from Chester responded.
Dew said, "After looking at it, they asked me if I wanted the good news or the bad news first. The good news was that it hadn't gone off, the bad was that it was still live. But was not thought to be life-threatening, which is why no evacuation was ordered."
Nantucket, Massachusetts a resident removing a tree stump was shocked to uncover an ordnance item. The resident called the police who responded with the local fire station. A Massachusetts State Police bomb squad responded to safely transport and dispose of the item.
Rich Hill, Missouri An employee looking for tools in a Missouri city-owned building discovered a live military-grade mortar round which, according to reports from Bates County Sheriff's Office, had first been discovered about a year ago. At the time, the UXO was placed on a shelf and forgotten.
According to a Facebook post from the sheriff's office, sheriff deputies and the Rich Hill Police Department were first to respond to the building after reports of the discovery. The Lee's Summit Bomb Squad then reported the find to the Kansas City Bomb Squad, which then notified EOD based at Fort Riley, Kansas.
An update from the sheriff's office reported that the U.S. Army Bomb Squad detonated the mortar in a controlled explosion. The update reassured residents in the area, who may have heard a "large explosion," that "everything is ok."
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