Grenade turns out to be a dud, police say

Williamsburg emergency officials got a bit of a startle last week when a local family discovered what appeared to be a live hand grenade.
Williamsburg Police Detective Wayne Bird said a local resident had recently passed away, and some of the man’s family members were going through his home on Rains Street Aug. 30 when they came across some war memorabilia.
“Apparently he had quite a bit of stuff that he brought back from the Korean War. He brought back several grenades,” Bird said. “Most of the grenades he brought back had a hole drilled in the bottom of them that pretty much tells you it’s a dud.”
One relative came across a pineapple fragmentation grenade with no hole in the bottom of it, and the fuse and pin intact.
“She got kind of concerned about it, and took it to some people. They contacted the police department here,” Bird said.
After Assistant Police Chief Denny Shelley and Bird examined the grenade, they evacuated the immediate area, and contacted the Kentucky State Police Hazardous Device unit, which sent an officer to the scene.
“He assumed right away it was a live grenade,” Bird noted. “Come to find out it was a dud. The guy from the hazardous device unit said 60 percent of the hand grenade calls he gets are live. He said what made that particular grenade so dangerous was because it is a WWII grenade.
“Grenades now a days have a three-second delay on them, but that particular grenade has an instantaneous fuse. Once you pull the pin and release it, it blows. That particular kind of grenade is very dangerous.”
Bird noted that some family members knew the grenade was a dud, but that the owner had joked that it was a live grenade, so nobody was completely certain.
He said officers decided to error on the side of caution when dealing with the grenade since the grenade has a 75 yards blast area.
Bird added that he learned an interesting fact from the hazardous device unit officer.
“Kentucky is the leader in the United States for recovering explosive devices,” Bird said. “I don’t know what attributes to that. Maybe it is the fact that we have so many veterans in this area.”