The Santa Maria Courthouse was evacuated on Labor Day after a man notified police that he had a potentially live grenade inside his vehicle.
The man was standing in the Santa Maria Police Department lobby when he made the call. The police report states that the man said he had bought a storage locker in Nipomo at an auction on Aug. 31.
When he was looking through the locker’s contents, he found the grenade and did some research online—determining that the grenade could be live. The report said the man then drove his vehicle to the Santa Maria Courthouse parking lot, left the locker in his vehicle, and notified police.
Santa Maria police contacted the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Office Bomb Squad, which secured and removed the grenade for disposal.
The Sheriff’s Office is investigating the incident.
This article appears in Sep 4-11, 2014.
