Bomb squad called twice after clean-up crew finds grenades, explosives in home of dead veteran

COBB COUNTY, Ga. — A clean-up crew made a startling discovery at a home in Cobb County.

Workers found grenades and other explosive devices in the basement. The Cobb County bomb squad had to respond not once, but twice, to the house on Hollyridge Drive.

Up, Up and Away Junk Hauling first discovered the devices Sept. 14 while cleaning out the house, which belonged to a veteran who’s now deceased.

Owner Taylor Chastain said he’s always warned his team to be watchful for dangerous items, but his employees never expected this.

“Generally, it’s for needles, firearms, things like that,” he said. “But he came up out of the basement and was kind of shocked and a little bit pale.”

That’s when another worker went to investigate.

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“He went down there and looked and said, ‘Oh man, we’ve got to get out of here.’ And so they immediately vacated the premises. They got our equipment out of the way, and we called the police at that point,” Chastain said.

The bomb squad showed up. Cobb County police said they recovered about 40 devices; seven of them were live. Then, five days later, the crew found more explosives.

“After about a half load, we found another ammunition can full of grenades,” Chastain said. “We found a mortar shell in a filing cabinet. At that point, we had to stop work and had to call them again.”

The bomb squad responded a second time. Police said in this search, they recovered seven devices, with one of them live. All the live explosives were destroyed.

Police said the devices were more than 50 years old and possibly dated back to the Korean War.

A neighbor, who did not want to be identified, told Channel 2′s Bryan Mims that she was aware the veteran had collected old weapons and artifacts, but thought they were harmless.

For Chastain’s crew, this was a whole new experience.

“We found firearms, we found ammunition – things like that are relatively normal,” he said. “And we have procedures of how we handle those things, but certainly never (found) anything this dangerous.”

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