TEXAS CITY — Workers replacing a roof in north Texas City came across something you normally don’t find — a live hand grenade.
Homeowner Doug Johnson said he couldn’t believe what the roofers found when they first called him at 11 a.m. Thursday. Tucked in the corner of his house in the 1100 block of 24th Avenue was a pineapple-shaped grenade.
“It had to have been placed there when the house was built,” Johnson said. “You can’t get to it through the attic; you have to pull the entire roof off. It may have been up there for 50 years.”
At first, Johnson thought the grenade was a dummy. He took a closer look and saw that the pin was in place.
“When I saw that, I went, ‘Oh s---’ and put it down on the ground,” Johnson said.
He called police, who called the fire department and the FBI.
A federal bomb technician was dispatched from Houston to take the grenade away.
Meanwhile, the roofers kept hammering away.
“We had to order them to stop working,” police Capt. Brian Goetschius said.
Police evacuated the houses next door as the FBI bomb technician, in a protective bomb suit, secured the grenade in an armored box.
Under police escort, the technician took the grenade to the Texas City shooting range, where it was detonated.
Johnson bought the house in 1992.
He said he had some roof work done since then, but it was not as extensive as what was required after Hurricane Ike.
The original owners of the house have since died, Johnson said.
Goetschius said it appears the grenade was a World War II-era fragmentation grenade.
