Call for grenade prompts evacuations in New Castle

NEW CASTLE, Pa. — Neighbors in New Castle received quite the wake up call overnight, as police responded to a call for an apparent grenade.

“It was pretty crazy, I didn’t think it was going to end up evacuating the whole street, I was like ‘my neighbors are probably gonna hate me!’” said Michelle McFarland.

McFarland had discovered the apparent explosive earlier in the day Sunday while magnet fishing in the Shenango River. The hobby involves sending a magnet into a water body to search for items and subsequently clean up littered scrap metal.

“We got a whole bucket full of scrap metal yesterday,” she said. “Railroad ties, old nails for the most part.”

But then, with one pull, she and a friend discovered what looked like a pineapple grenade.

“I was thinking, ‘well, this is really cool, it’d be a nice keepsake,’ but then I reached out to a few people and everyone was telling me I needed to have it looked at.”

McFarland brought the items home and phoned police.

“Officers responded to the scene and viewed the grenade, took pictures of it, sent it down to the Allegheny County Bomb Squad and they said to secure the area until they got there, which we did,” said New Castle Police Chief Robert Salem.

Road blocks were established on E. Lutton Street and surrounding roads that would cross the direct path of the grenade, and residents were evacuated.

“All of us just wanted to get back in and get back to bed, truthfully,” said evacuated resident Evans Lindsey.

Lindsey said he never suspected the grenade was actually live, and found the situation somewhat “comical.”

As it turned out, investigators “believe the grenade to be a replica of the M2 frag grenade,” according to the police report.

Residents were allowed to return to their homes Monday morning.

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