An Idaho woman thought she found a fake grenade and took it to the police. Turns out it was live.
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CASCADE — A woman walked into the Valley County Sheriff’s Office Friday morning and told deputies she had a fake grenade in her car. She found the device while cleaning out her dead brother’s trailer and thought it might be a decoration.
Deputies walked out to her car and immediately knew they had a serious situation on their hands. The grenade was live and could detonate at any moment.
Officials immediately cordoned off the area, shut down county buildings, sent a Code Red alert to the public informing them of what was happening and brought in school buses to help barricade the streets, according to a Valley County Sheriff’s Office news release.
An explosive ordinance disposal bomb squad in Mountain Home was contacted and the crew made their way to Cascade, but officials say they were delayed because of Labor Day traffic.
The squad finally arrived around 3 p.m., five hours after the ordeal began, and the device was loaded into a containment box. It was then taken to a county commissioner’s ranch, where the grenade was detonated.
The woman with the grenade allowed deputies to search her deceased brother’s trailer, according to a news release, but they did not find any similar devices.
“If you think you have an item that could be explosive or dangerous, please call and my deputies will respond and assist you with the identification of those items,” Sheriff Patti Bolen said.