| Sheriff's deputies handle hand grenade found in home east of Saint Robert |
By: Darrell Todd Maurina
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Deputies secured this grenade Wednesday before turning it over to Fort Leonard Wood personnel for destruction.
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SAINT ROBERT, Mo. (May 20, 2010) — As a law enforcement agency outside the gates of Fort Leonard Wood with numerous deputies who are military veterans, the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Department has many people with military munitions training and some reserve deputies whose full time jobs in the Army Engineer School or Army Military Police School involve training current soldiers.
That training came in handy Wednesday afternoon when the department received a report that a live hand grenade had been found in a home on the 14000 block of Tulsa Road east of St. Robert.
According to Sheriff J.B. King, his deputies received a call about 3:07 p.m. to a home where the resident had recently died. In the process of inventorying his property, the grenade was found in a box.
“The grenade appeared to have been in the storage box for a very long time,” King said. “Deputies secured the grenade and later turned it over to an explosive ordnance disposal unit at Fort Leonard Wood for destruction.”
Two deputies responded to the home, both of them Vietnam veterans who King said are “quite used to grenades.”
Nobody was injured in the incident, but King warned that old munitions often become unstable and the deputies used precautions.
“The grenade was very old and the cotter pin which acts as a safety device to hold the arming spoon to the side of the grenade was very rusty and the deputies did not trust it so they taped it to prevent it from moving and then a deputy firmly held the spoon to the side of the grenade as an extra measure of caution, and that is why the grenade is in the deputy’s hands,” King said.
Sheriff’s logs indicate that the deputies took the grenade out to a vacant lot “to find out what to do when they get direction from the Army.” Military personnel arrived within half an hour and took possession of the grenade.
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