LANSING — A magnet fisherman pulled an inert mortar round from the Grand River just down Michigan Avenue from the Capitol last week, according to a video posted to a Lansing Reddit page.
“I went magnet fishing on this bridge which I normally have a lot of luck with, usually finding weapons or historical objects (license plates from 1912 and 1913, old toy cars, tokens, porcelain plates, etc.), I certainly didn’t expect a mortar … I’m not sure if it was live or not, so we called the state bomb squad,” read the XanDuLowMagnetizer poster online.
The video posted Tuesday shows a man and Michigan State Police bomb squad officers on the north side of the Michigan Avenue bridge over the Grand River.
“(The) MSP Bomb Squad responded to that area and retrieved an ordinance from a magnet fisherman. The ordinance was inert (not live) and was removed accordingly,” said Detective Sgt. Isaac Mills.
There was no indication how the mortar round ended up in the river or how long it had been there.
In the video, the magnet fisherman can be heard saying he’s dragged up “another silencer,” but once the item is in the man’s hands, a second person says it looks like a piece of ammunition.
The video clip then switches to the man speaking on a cell phone and telling someone that the object looks like an 80 or 82 millimeter mortar and that he thought it was a motorcycle muffler.
The video then shows an MSP bomb squad truck arriving and officers approaching the item.
The 39-second video ends with officers moving the item to their vehicle.
“But I sure am tired of finding UXCOs,” the post notes. In a response to the post, the person says the bomb squad blew up the item.
This article originally appeared in Lansing State Journal: Inert mortar shell captured near Lansing Michigan Ave. bridge over Grand River
