Friends ‘played’ with live grenade

A FRIEND and neighbour of a young man who held a grenade as it detonated said they should have known better than to remove the pin.

Daniel Hendricks, 24, was in the Goud Road house in Vanguard Estate, Cape Town, minutes before the bomb exploded on Monday night, injuring six.

Hendricks said Devlin Mitchell, 19, and five other youths were playing with the grenade one of them had retrieved from his father’s safe.

The father apparently worked in the air force, and was overseas.

Hendricks said the men were playing with the grenade, which they believed contained no explosive material.

As they were allegedly passing the grenade around, Hendricks said he left, and when he was outside the house, he heard the explosion.

“I told them what they were doing was dangerous. When I was outside, I heard ‘bah!’ and ran back. Devlin’s hand was off, and all he could ask was for us to look for his hand.

Blood

“We looked under the bed, but there was no hand. The blood was so much we hoped the ambulance would come in time because he was losing so much blood,” Hendricks said.

Emergency service and police arrived about 20 minutes later, Hendricks said.

Yesterday a man was at the house taking measurements to replace the shattered windows. A woman at the house refused to speak to the media.

Police spokesperson FC van Wyk said a case of unlawful possession of an explosive device to cause injury to persons or damage to property was being investigated.

“Circumstances surrounding an explosion on Monday at about 18.30 in Goud Street, Vanguard Estate, where six young males aged between 15 and 20 years old were seriously injured are under investigation.

“The six were rushed to various hospitals in serious conditions for emergency medical treatment,” he said.

A spokesman for Groote Schuur Hospital, where four of the six were taken, said one person was in a critical condition, while the other three were stable.

The other two were taken to private hospitals. – Mercury Correspondent