Police Respond to Bomb Scare Near Sierra Madre Elementary School

Sierra Madre Police and Fire units responded to a call reporting an explosive device on the front porch of a home on Grandview Avenue Thursday afternoon. The event caused police to shut down an area of the neighborhood between Auburn Avenue and Lima Street. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Bomb Squad aided in the removal of the device, which was determined to be inert.

The call reporting the incident came from the homeowners on whose porch the shell was sitting, according to Lieutenant Len Hundshamer of the Sierra Madre Police Department.

"We got a call from the actual residents of the location indicating that he had a 20 millimeter shell that he had on his porch," Hundshamer said. That's a rather large piece of ordinance, so we responded to this as if it was an explosive device, evacuated the houses immediately around it and brought in the Sheriff's bomb team to take a look at it."

Hundshamer said that the Bomb Squad was able to determine that the device was inert, as it was a "training shell" and that it did not "contain the ability to propel anything" but rather "makes a pop for training purposes."

"It was not considered to be a live device at all," Hundshamer said. "It was entirely inert."

The incident happened at around 3 p.m. Thursday afternoon, just as school was letting out at nearby Sierra Madre Elementary School, much to the interest of many parents picking up there children from school.

"It was just one of those things where we had to lock down the neighborhood at an awkward time of day when school was letting out."

As for why the man decided to place the shell on his front porch, police said that was one thing they had yet to figure out.

"He was an older gentleman so it was quite confusing as to why this shell was there…we never quite figured out the 'why' of it." Hundshamer told Patch, adding that the gentleman was a World War II veteran and collector of memorabilia from that era.

Police also looked through the man's home in an effort to assure no other explosives were present and determined that no other potentially explosive devices were in the residence and that the area was safe.