By John Gullion
Thursday, July 7, 2005 11:54 PM CDT
the selma times-journal
Workers removing furniture from the home of a deceased elderly woman in GWC Homes got a shock Thursday when they spotted a hand grenade stuck in the bottom of the couch.
“It looked like it had fell down under the cushions to the springs,” Selma Police Chief Jimmy Martin said. “Officers responded to the scene and secured the area.”
The FBI, ATF and Montgomery Police Bomb Squad were called to the scene.
“They used a robot, armed with a camera, from about 50 yards away from the grenade,” Martin said.
The robot successfully ripped open the back of the couch, but could not secure the grenade.
“The camera on the robot could not reveal whether the pin was in,” Martin said. “They sent a bomb squad person fully dressed in.”
The pin was in the grenade and the grenade was active.
Martin said it appears the grenade had been there for some time.
“After the grenade was secured it was then taken to Montgomery to a bunker to be disposed of,” he said.
Martin said police are investigating how the grenade got into the elderly lady’s couch. He said she had a military veteran son, who is also deceased, but could not say whether or not that was how the grenade came to be in the house.
“Right now, we’re trying to link that up,” he said.
The body of a 42-year-old Dallas man being transported to Shreveport, Louisiana fell from the back of a truck and onto a busy Dallas freeway Tuesday. Dallas television station KTVT obtained photographs from the scene showing a gurney on its side and the man’s body partially uncovered. A police report from the Dallas Police Department indicates someone called police saying they had just spotted a body on a gurney with a blanket over it lying in the middle of State Highway 175.The investigating officer says he was met at the scene by two witnesses who saw the gurney fall onto the freeway. The officer says the man in a pickup truck with a camper shell on the back stated the back door to his vehicle came open and the man’s body fell out of the back. When he realized what had happened, the man returned to the scene to retrieve the body. Authorities say the body of Albert Haynes was being transported to a Shreveport funeral home after the man died Monday at a hospital in Mesquite, Texas. Funeral arrangements for Haynes were still pending late Wednesday.