Bomb squad at canal after artillery shell find
EMERGENCY services descended on a quiet towpath yesterday after a five-year-old boy pulled an artillery shell out from the canal.
William Nixon, 51, was out with two of his sons, five-year-old Leo and seven-year-old Riley, and friend Andrew, 49, magnet fishing in the canal at Ashton-under-Lyne.
The group, known the Leeds Magneters, found the device while fishing on bridge on Margaret Street.
Police set up a cordon around the canal, which branches off from Cavendish Street and down several side streets, with the main scene focused around the bridge.
At around 3.10pm, bomb disposal experts removed the device from the area, speeding away from
the scene with a full police convoy.
The M.E.N. understands the artillery shell was being removed from the site to then be destroyed in a controlled explosion away from the scene, but no police confirmation had been received at the time of publication.
Mr Nixon said: “It was me, my two sons, and a friend of ours that came along and it was a bit of a rubbish
bridge to be doing so we were just about to call it a day and head to another when low and behold little Leo pulls this shell out.
“To be honest, we don’t like to find them because it causes too much mayhem for everyone around but when they’re out, they’re out and you can’t really do anything.
“I’ve been doing it for nearly three years and I’ve had a grenade and a shell, Leo actually found a Magnum 38 9mm handgun in Manchester around four weeks ago. When you pull something like that up it just kicks in, not a panic but more of a ‘right now, what are we going to do?.’
“It’s one of them days, but for a five-year-old it’s made his day.”
It’s not the first time he or his sons have found weaponry, with the group often coming across knives, several guns, and even a grenade before.
Little Leo found a Magnum 38 9mm gun in Manchester just four weeks ago, with Riley finding a German SIG Sauer Second World War 38H handgun in Lincoln in December 2019, when he was just five.