Staff at a Goodwill store in Wisconsin were evacuated Friday when a military-grade ‘cluster bomb’ was found among donations that had been sitting there for a week.
Streets around the store in Janesville were sealed off for nearly three hours as a police bomb squad from Madison was called in to dispose of the device.
When they arrived they found the donor had also included some live ammunition in his package along with the internationally outlawed cluster bomb.
X-rays showed the bomb contained several live cells filled with apparent explosives and shards of metal.
‘Employees quickly followed safety protocols by informing store and donation center management and safety teams who then evacuated the building out of precaution for shoppers, donors and employees,’ Goodwill Industries of Southeastern Wisconsin said in a statement.
Streets around the store in Janesville were sealed off for nearly three hours as a police bomb squad from Madison was called in to dispose of the device
Staff discovered the lethal explosive while sorting through donations on Friday morning.
Janesville police Sergeant Benji Thompson said it is not unknown for people to accidentally donate antique explosives, ammunition, or even hand grenades.
But cluster bombs have been banned by 125 nations since 2010 when their use, transfer, production and stockpiling was outlawed under the United Nations Convention on Cluster Munitions.
Defined as a ‘conventional munition that is designed to disperse or release explosive submunitions, each weighing less than 20 kilograms,’ cluster bombs split into a series of ‘bomblets’ when deployed, each of which packs a lethal explosive charge of its own.
They can remain active for decades and are responsible for thousands of deaths and injuries around the world each year, particularly among children who can mistake them for toys.
Sergeant Thompson said police think the donor knew they were dropping off a bomb at Goodwill but remain open-minded about the motive.
The hunt will be hampered because the store takes donations day and night, and ‘everybody usually leaves the items in black garbage bags’, he told WCLO.
A separate police source told .com security footage was scant and the firm suspects the bomb may actually have arrived on a crate from its depot in Chicago.
The company which has more than 4,000 outlets nationwide is certainly no stranger to unusual donations.
Last month a store in Arizona called police in after they discovered a human skull complete with teeth inside a donation box.
Staff at Maricopa County Office of the Medical Examiner determined that the skull was probably of ‘historic origin’ and not criminally suspicious.
‘The Janesville Police Department and Dane County Sheriff’s Office Bomb Squad responded to the incident and provided further community safety guidance,’ Goodwill added in its statement.
‘The store and donation center resumed operations for shopping and donating shortly after 1:30 p.m.’