An unexpected discovery sparked Kent City Hall’s bomb scare

We now know what happened when a bomb scare shut down police headquarters and the Kent City Hall campus on Feb. 23.

It was apparently a military mortar round.

According to a police report, a man called police from the department parking garage around 12:30 p.m. He had been helping a friend go through her father’s belongings, and they had collected a box of miscellaneous live ammunition they wanted to turn in. One of the items inside was an artillery shell. The man wasn’t able to confirm whether it was inert or had an explosive device.

Officer Aaron Rankin called the man and told him to get out of the car while he took a look. Rankin served in the Marine Corps and quickly identified the device.

“I conducted a visual inspection of the device to assess for indicators that it was functional rather than decorative. Upon my initial examination, the casing that the device was in appeared to be authentic, and I could see the letters ‘H E’ imprinted toward the fuse (tip) of the shell, which stands for ‘High-Explosive,'” Rankin wrote in his report.

The parking garage was evacuated and sealed off. So were nearby facilities. Businesses in the area had to be notified, too.

The department called in the Bomb Disposal Unit from the Port of Seattle. When they got there and examined the device, they said the military needed to be called in.

Finally, the Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit from Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM) arrived, secured the mortar, and removed it.

The police lobby reopened hours later. City Hall was closed until 8 a.m. the next day.

How to safely handle unexpected explosive finds

So, what do you do if you find old military equipment or explosives?

It’s actually not that uncommon for people to try to turn in explosive devices at police departments and military bases. Last October, the Kent Police station was evacuated when someone brought a backpack to the department, which had what appeared to be homemade explosives inside. Someone had found it by a riverbank and drove it over.

In Arizona, a man drove up to a gate at a National Guard facility and tried to turn in what he thought was an explosive device. That triggered evacuations and a bomb squad response, and the man was detained for hours.

Reached by phone, a spokesperson in the JBLM public affairs office said to call local law enforcement. They’ll know what to do.

But don’t move any suspected explosives. Older ones, especially, can be volatile and risk exploding if not handled properly.

Read more of Jillian Raftery’s stories here.