A box bought at an estate sale in Austin, Texas, contained live Second World War grenades, prompting a police bomb squad response.
Officers were called on Tuesday after a resident found what appeared to be wartime grenades among the items they had purchased. Bomb disposal specialists confirmed that the devices were active and contained explosive material capable of detonating.
The squad seized and removed the grenades while officers secured the area, established a perimeter and kept neighbours away, the Austin Police Association said.
It praised the bomb squad’s expertise and “steady nerves”, adding: “Handling 80-year-old explosives with unknown stability is dangerous, precise work, and they do it with the professionalism this city counts on.”
Warning over military ordnance
Police urged members of the public not to touch or move military ordnance, including grenades, shells and mortar rounds, even when it appears to be inert.
Anyone who finds a suspected device should leave it where it is and allow trained professionals to deal with it, authorities said.
The discovery is not the first time unexploded military ordnance has been found among old personal belongings. The FBI has previously said families of US war veterans have sometimes uncovered dangerous souvenirs dating from conflicts including the First and Second World Wars, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the Gulf War.
Last year, a three-year-old boy in central Washington found a live Second World War hand grenade on his family’s property. He was not harmed, and bomb technicians removed the device and disposed of it in a rural area outside the town where the family lived.
