Boy playing war found real hand grenade

A boy and his friend playing pretend war found a hand grenade in the woods behind a home in Rock Hill, South Carolina last week.

Jeremiah Pride, 9, dug it out of the ground while playing war with toy guns at his home. He was on his knees pretending to shoot someone when he felt something unusual.


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"They didn't really understand what they had at first," said Jeremiah's mother, Mary Pride. "When they brought it around the front, we noticed it was a grenade and I called the police." Dispatchers warned them to be careful with the grenade until police arrived. "I ran across the street far away from it," Jeremiah said.

The grenade body had no fuse or explosive, according to a Rock Hill police report. It was secured and taken to a bunker for destruction. It's unclear where the grenade came from or how long it was buried. The grenade was "very old," Pride said. "You could tell it had been there a lot of years, maybe from the Civil War days," she said. "It was very rustic." Jeremiah called his discovery "very, very cool."