Boy, 3, carries live grenade into his family’s home

Inquisitive children picking up things they shouldn’t is a tale as old as time.

But a toddler finding a live grenade outside their home is truly something else.

The three-year-old boy made the dangerous discovery in Washington state, US.

He took it inside to show his parents in the town of Hardline on Monday, according to the Grant County Sherriff’s office.

Naturally, the parents called the emergency services and put the explosive device in their shed while they waited.

The bizarre situation took a frightening turn when bomb technicians determined the grenade was live.

They took it to a rural area north of the home to dispose of it.

The sheriff’s office later shared images on Facebook showing the rusted device.

‘The grenade was of a type used during the Second World War and had clearly been exposed to the elements for some time,’ stated the sheriff’s office.

‘It’s not known how the grenade ended up in the family’s front yard, nor how long it had been there.’ 

How the grenade wound up at the family’s front yard remains a mystery.

The grenade was not military grade, but rather an improvised explosive device (IED) or homemade device inserted in the shell of a grenade, according to Commander Clifford Pratt of the Washington State Police bomb squad. That actually made it more dangerous to handle, he said.

‘They really have no controls, or no quality controls,’ Pratt told WTHR.

‘We find those insanely volatile because we just don’t know what’s inside of them until we can put the bomb suit down, go down, range, X-ray them and figure them out.’

Hartline is a small town about 200 miles east of Seattle.

It happened two-and-a-half years after a nine-year-old boy from Yarcombe, East Devon, found an unexploded World War II grenade while looking for bones in their backyard. His mum called police, who brought a bomb squad that detonated the grenade safely detonated in a field nearby.

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