14 DAY TRIAL // Over the weekend, on Saturday, law enforcement officers in New Jersey, US, handled a most peculiar cry for help from a local resident.
Long story short, a man in the Villas neighborhood called them to report that, while digging in his yard, he happened upon an odd-looking sphere with a stamp reading “4 kg, 85mm” on it.
Although not exactly an artillery expert, the man, whose identity has no yet been disclosed, did well to alert authorities rather than try to get rid of the metal sphere himself.
As it turns out, the mysterious object was not your perfectly ordinary metal ball, but a cannonball. An explosive one, for that matter.
“On Saturday, 08-29-15, Lower Township Police Officers responded to the 200 block of West Bates Avenue in the Villas section of Lower Township to investigate the discovery of a live explosive cannonball.”
“The device was described as being approximately 5 inches [nearly 13 centimeters] in circumference with a brass cap on it,” the Lower Township Police Department wrote in a report.
A bomb squad removed and detonated the cannonball
Not having any experience with handling explosive devices of this kind, authorities in New Jersey asked for help from a bomb squad in Atlantic City, who didn't take long to report for duty.
They first took an X-ray of the metal sphere to confirm that it was in fact a live cannonball, and then removed it, transported it to a safe location far away from populated areas and detonated it.
At least for now, the origin of the cannonball and how it was that the explosive device ended up buried in the yard where it was discovered quite by mistake are questions left unanswered.
The Lower Township Police Department caution that, although cannonballs are a rare sight, the fact of the matter is that artillery ammunition is quite often found in this part of the country.
Whoever happens to come across such devices is asked not to try and remove them themselves, but instead alert law enforcement officers and let them sort things out.