Unexploded grenade found in River Cam on kayaking trip

Subsequent pictures showed a police car and a bomb disposal lorry where the grenade was discovered

A mother and son retrieved an unexploded grenade from the Coe Fen last JulyBob Harvey/Geograph

by Cameron White

This article is 5 years old

Saturday March 6 2021, 7:45pm

A magnet fisher this afternoon (06/03) pulled a grenade out of the stretch of the River Cam which passes Trinity College.

Richard Leech had gone magnet fishing with his two children when his magnet picked up a hand grenade, which lacked the top section including the safety pin and the fuse.

After taking a photo of the device and then lowering it back to the bottom of the river, Leech called a Trinity porter over who helped him tie the other end of the rope to which the magnet was attached around a tree, before calling police.

Subsequent pictures showed a police car, a bomb disposal lorry and a further van where the grenade was discovered (see below).

Police and bomb disposal officers were called to the River Cam on Saturday afternoon (March 6) after a magnet fisher pulled a grenade out of the river.#TrinityCollege #Cambridge #RiverCam pic.twitter.com/JEV4P43Vhz
- IanBroughall (@IanBroughall) March 6, 2021

Leech told CambridgeshireLive that his first reaction to pulling the grenade out of the river “was saying out loud ‘for xxxx sake’ as I had my two sons in the kayak with me”.

This comes as a mother and son also picked up an unexploded grenade in the Coe Fen when they went magnet fishing there last July, which saw the Fen Causeway closed off as police and a bomb disposal unit safely disposed of the device.

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