One of the U.S.-Canada border's busiest border crossings was closed for about an hour Monday after guards found a grenade in the glove compartment of a car leaving the United States, Canadian officials said.
The driver, a woman from Houston, was taken into custody but released after interviewers determined she hadn't known the grenade was in the car, Royal Canadian Mounted Police spokesman Tim Shields said.
Shields said the 28-year-old woman apparently was lost, and that she meant to drive to Vancouver, Wash. — at the state's border with Oregon — not Vancouver, British Columbia, 250 miles to the north.
posted on February 16, 2004 09:16:24 PM new
Well sure - If you can't even get straight which town you are driving to you probably wouldn't even know what that thing in the glove compartment was if you saw it. Some kind of bug bomb? Duh.
posted on February 17, 2004 07:18:19 AM new
On the newslast night itwasannouncedthat she was let gobecause it was determined that she really hadn't known there was a grenade in the glove box. They also said that her husband "is in the military." I imagine that his commanding officers willhave a few words with him about this...
******
Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there --Clare Booth Luce
posted on February 17, 2004 07:21:48 AM new
You would think that her husband would know better, Why this idiot would put a grenade in a glove box just staggers the mind.
posted on February 17, 2004 08:12:20 AM new
Makes one wonder what kind of lax security they have on the base where someone can just walk off with a grenade.
If they can do this what else thats even more deadly can they waltz out with?
Security my azz, heads should roll over this.
posted on February 17, 2004 08:22:01 AM new
I am curious also, because even when I was in the Navy, if you even dropped anything overboard in port they sent divers after it.
posted on February 17, 2004 12:36:41 PM new
Maybe he's in the National Guard If they can misplace people, heaven knows what else can walk off...
******
Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there --Clare Booth Luce
posted on February 17, 2004 12:54:34 PM new
I keep waiting for it to come out that those "dumb ass canucks " are too stupid to know the difference between one of these(cigarette lighter) :
posted on February 17, 2004 01:42:16 PM new
That's an old fashioned one. The new ones have a coil of spring steel and better propellant and when they come apart instead of chunks from a pineapple you get a zillion little pieces of flat strip like a bunch of single edge razor blades.
posted on February 17, 2004 02:11:41 PM new
Right, Gravid, and they look more like this:
And some flashlights, oddly enough, are made to resemble them.
But take a look at this grenade made to look like a common flashlight:
This device delivers a devastating blast--approximately equal to two NATO frag-grenades. The original thumb switch activates a 12-second electronic delay. When the circuit is closed, an electric blasting cap (battery powered) ignites flake aluminum (thermate) which burns at a temperature sufficient to ignite C-4 plastique. Steel ball bearings are used as shrapnel if the target is machinery; lead pellets are used for a human target.
Now known as the "Angolan Torch" due to its extensive deployment during the formative stages of covert operations in Africa, this device is designed to be used in the same manner as a military grenade (i.e., the switch is activated and the device is thrown toward the target), though it is easily "booby-trapped" to detonate upon operation of the switch, or removal of the lens for inspection. This item is very susceptible to X-ray detection, but is usually overlooked in a standard search. It was most commonly carried in the glove-box of an operative's vehicle.
Given the topic of this thread, maybe those Canadian Border Guards are more on the ball than Twelve believes, and maybe there *is* more to this story (of a covert nature) than we'll ever know, since no articles I've seen have shown a picture of the grenade in question...
posted on February 17, 2004 05:00:38 PM new
Isn't it funny--our military is now wearing helmets & using grenades that look like what the German army used in WWII...
******
Censorship, like charity, should begin at home; but unlike charity, it should end there --Clare Booth Luce
posted on February 18, 2004 11:44:11 AM new
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
Grenade in vehicle at border not real 'It might be a training' weapon, source says
By MIKE BARBER
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
It took more than 24 hours and an international investigation by Canadian and U.S. civilian and military authorities.
But by yesterday afternoon federal investigators could say that a hand grenade found Monday in the glove compartment of an American woman's vehicle crossing into Canada near Blaine was not real.
"We now believe it might be a training grenade," a federal criminal justice source told the Seattle Post-Intelligencer yesterday. "When you throw them they go 'pop' like a firecracker to simulate combat" instead of a concussive explosion of deadly shrapnel from a fragmentation grenade, the source said.
While definitive word was not returned from the Canadian lab inspecting the grenade yesterday afternoon, "all agencies involved think it is a training grenade," the source said. "There is no indication that it was terrorism or that she planned to blow anything up."
If they can misplace people, heaven knows what else can walk off...
