A grenade explosion in an Indiana home killed a father and injured his two children.
The 47-year-old man was going through his grandfather’s belongings when he discovered the hand grenade, WLRN reported.
“Someone reportedly pulled the pin on the device and it detonated,” Sheriff Oscar Martinez Jr. said in a Facebook post.
Officers from the Lake County Sheriff’s Department responded to a report at a residence in Lake of the Four Seasons on Saturday a little before 6:30 p.m.
The father was found unresponsive and was later pronounced dead. His children, a 14-year-old an 18-year-old, were transported to the hospital and treated for shrapnel wounds.
A bomb squad was called in to secure the area. Homicide detectives and a CSI unit are investigating.
It isn’t uncommon for war veterans to bring back grenades or other weapons as souvenirs, according to the FBI.
“Usually what happens is when a veteran passes away, and family members are cleaning out their items, usually in a basement, garage, or attic, they’ll come across something that they know or suspect is a military ordnance,” said Special Agent Patrick Carolan, a bomb technician with the FBI’s St. Louis Field Office. “They call their local police, and we work with the police department’s bomb squad.”
The FBI St. Louis Field Office reported receiving at least one call a week about military weapons and ammunition. These weapons can remain intact for decades, and the field office has reportedly disabled explosives dating back to the Civil War.
Special Agent Patrick Carolan said it takes a highly trained technician to disable these weapons, and he urges family members to call the police if they come across any suspect devices.
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