On Thursday, July 9th, 2020, two young boys were magnet fishing like they normally did for fun but things got seriously dangerous when one of them pulled up a hand grenade.
Boys reel in hand grenade from lake while magnet fishing in #Finland https://t.co/RdHIsY6zYm
— Yle News (@ylenews) July 2, 2020
Lari Tammivuori and Viljami Juutilainen were magnet fishing around noon at Lake Vesijärvi in Lahti, Finland. They had a strong neodymium magnet with a rope attached to it pulling up old bottle caps and random pieces of scrap metal like normal, but on their last throw, they pulled up a suspicious-looking piece of metal.
“We have this magnetic fishing kit which we use to fish for junk in the water. Usually we get bottle caps and nails. Then it came. I didn’t realise right away that it was a hand grenade,” Viljami explained to YLE.
After casting the magnet into the water they pulled up, what they didn’t realize at the time, was a hand grenade. They took it back to shore and inspected it and once they had an idea that it might be a grenade, they didn’t touch it again, got away from it and Viljami called his mom.
His mother drove down there to examine their find and she took pictures of it and sent it to the boy’s aunt who is a police officer so she could confirm if it was a grenade or not. After taking a look at the object, the boy’s aunt instructed them to step away from it and stay back until the police could get there.
“It was old-fashioned looking and pretty rusty. I said it could be a grenade. His aunt is a police officer so I sent her a few pictures [of the grenade]. We were given clear instructions to step away from it and wait for police to arrive,” Maarit told YLE.
Police taped off the area around 1pm and called the Defense Force to come handle the situation. They brought in bomb specialists to safely dispose of the explosive device and had the area safe for civilians again by 3pm. The mother of the boy is very grateful that her son and his friend were ok.