A fisherman got more than he bargained for after a day of magnet fishing. He accidentally reeled in a WWII-era grenade. Cue a visit from the bomb squad.
The incident happened in Rhode Island. 35-year-old fisherman Gerard Perreault was trying out his hand at magnet fishing at a pier in Rocky Point State Park. He was quite shocked to pull up a World War II-era Mk 2 hand grenade. He instantly recognized it as something he shouldn't be messing with.
"I was pretty surprised when I pulled that up," Perreault told The Providence Journal.
Realizing that the grenade could still be explosive, the fisherman called the Warwick Police Department. They then called in the Rhode Island Bomb Squad to handle the explosive device. Authorities ended up evacuating the pier while they dealt with the very corroded grenade.
Fisherman and A Grenade
"It was very, very crowded," Perreault told the newspaper. "I felt a little bad."
Fortunately, there are no kabooms in this story. The bomb squad determined that the grenade was inert and would no longer explode. Deputy Thomas Groff, commander of the Explosive Operations Division for the Rhode Island Office of the State Fire Marshal, said it was an Mk2 grenade from World War II.
Neither the police nor the fisherman could understand how the grenade ended up in the water. According to Perreault, it was definitely the strangest thing that he ever pulled up out of the water. Usually, he recovers bottle caps and other trinkets. But a grenade was not on his bucket list.
"Even if it's junk, it's good to get it out of the water," he said.
Sadly, the fisherman will have to find a new spot to magnet fish. He said that officials told him not to fish there anymore after what happened. It hardly seems fair.
"They did ask me not to fish in that area anymore," he said.
