The two roommates who live in a Dartmouth, N.S., home where a live grenade was tossed onto their property say they have no idea who targeted them or why.
One of the men says he went out the front door to smoke a cigarette at 6:30 a.m. Tuesday when he noticed what appeared to be a grenade on the corner of the porch with its pin half pulled out.
“I looked at it and I said, ‘Oh, fu–,’” he said
Global News spoke to the two on the condition of anonymity because they’re concerned about their safety.
The man says he quickly alerted his roommate, who was equally shocked.
“I got a call from him and he said that he found a grenade on the front and I was like, ‘Like a toy grenade?’ And he said, ‘No I think it was real,’” the roommate recalled.
“I was just so confused. It’s a quiet street so everybody else is mostly retired — it’s quiet.”
Police were called to the scene and evacuated nearby homes for several hours. Halifax Regional Police’s Explosive Disposal Unit and the Navy’s Fleet Diving Unit used a robot to X-ray the grenade and confirmed it was real — and live.
“In all the years I’ve been a police officer, I’ve yet to encounter such an incident, truly. And I’ve been an officer for many years,” said Const. Paul DesRochers.
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The robot was used to remove the grenade from the porch and take it into the backyard where it was safely detonated at around 3:30 p.m.
A barren patch of ash and dirt is all that’s left behind.
“We’re standing there, and the whole street kind of shook when they did that. And that’s when I kind of realized, ‘Oh, it’s real,’” said the second roommate.
“The cops said that it had a 15-metre blast radius, so that would probably be the whole front of the house.”
The men’s next door neighbour, Bob Marshall, says he has never experienced anything close to a full-block evacuation in his 40 years of living on the street.
“We were rooted out of the house by knocks on the door and the doorbell ringing at 6:30, 6:24 a.m. And being an older person, it’s hard to get going, eh?’” Marshall said.
He and his wife have their bedroom on the corner of their house — mere feet away from where the grenade was left on their neighbour’s porch.
“I think it’s natural to have some fear, yes. You know, if they come with guns next, who knows?” said Marshall.
The tenant at the home in question agrees it’s disconcerting to think about what happened. He says he has no idea who would target them.
“I didn’t sleep the best. Little confused and wondering why and obviously people are messaging me and sending me the news articles and that’s kind of when it got real too, because I realized that’s big news,” he said.
He adds he decided to stay in the home overnight because if the culprits were going to attack again, he felt it was unlikely they would try to “do it the very same day.”
“But eventually things cool down. I guess we’ll have to see who they find out it is and why,” he said.
Halifax Regional Police say they’re still investigating where the grenade came from and who left it at the home. They’re asking anyone with video from their area or information to contact them.
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