A story to keep an eye on…
From the News Journal:
A 58-year-old New Castle man was critically injured this morning after opening an ammunition box left by a neighbor in the Van Dyke Village neighborhood for a special trash pick up, officials said. Explosive experts from Dover Air Force Base have been called to help after officials believe they found more explosives.
According to Chionchio, a woman on Van Dyke Drive put several items out for a special trash pickup today. This included an ammo box that belonged to her husband. She did not know there were explosives in the box, Chionchio said.
The man, a neighbor from across the street, asked if he could have the box. After getting her permission he took it across the street and placed it on a pickup truck tailgate. As he opened the box, Chionchio said, a mortar shell went off, covering him in shrapnel.
When I first read this story as it was breaking this morning, it sounded like a man was building a bomb and it exploded on him. Now it appears that the husband of the woman who put out the explosives in the trash unknowingly, and that the injured man was an innocent victim. Still, the question remains why the husband had the explosives in the first place, and how many more explosives does he have. Before our Second Amendment fetishists get their britches in knots, please note that there is no right to bear explosives. It is quite illegal. And it is quite Constitutional for them to be illegal.
In the end, the likeliest explanation is that these were old WWII or Vietnam military ordinance that this husband had in his possession for whatever reason, rather than this being a home grown terrorist. Still, I think the husband is going to face some legal consequences.
I’m going to posit that once you have an incendiary device in your possession it becomes VERY difficult to get rid of. You probably get to the point that “special trash pickup” sounds like exactly what you are looking for.
After some time, the thing probably becomes so unstable that you are afraid to drive it off to the woods somewhere to blow it up. And calling the police would likely result in a great deal of paperwork, lawyering and public embarrassment.
This is why it isn’t cool to have explosives, kids.
Some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb.
You’d be surprised at how many people don’t know how unstable munitions can be. Up on Cape Cod, there is a military reservation where unexploded ordnance would appear in people’s yards and other places. Some of those folks kept that stuff as souvenirs. Don’t remember if they had any explode, but there were plenty of funny stories of how the collected stuff got discovered. You can typically take aged ammunition and gunpowder to the HHW collection events here, but not sure what they’d do if you showed up with a mortar in a box.
It appears that this guy had some serious munitions in his home, according to the News-Journal.
Just another law-abiding citizen.
Explosives experts found 11 unexploded 40 mm shells in the first block of Van Dyke Drive.
What was he going to do? Shell New Jersey?
We are not taking any options off the table.