Benicia: Boy looks for crabs, finds grenade instead

Jake Diehl rode his scooter to the Benicia waterfront on Sunday with a friend and waded into the water to look for fishing lures and crabs.

Instead, the 11-year-old found a vintage grenade.

When Jake came home, he told his father he rode seven blocks with the grenade before setting it down on the lawn of the historic old state Capitol building on First Street. Bob Diehl, 53, figured his son was wrong and maybe it just looked like an explosive.

All the same, he told Jake to take him the nearly mileand-a-half route from their house to where he left the grenade. When they got there, Diehl recalled saying, “Holy moly, that thing looks like it could be a real grenade.”

Then he called the Benicia Police Department, which confirmed: It was a real grenade.

Officers met Diehl and his son to examine Jake’s discovery, and luckily the pin was still intact, said police spokeswoman Irma Widjojo.

The ridge lines of the grenade were apparently hard to discern after being worn down by time and the elements.

“It’s been in the water long enough for barnacles to cover it,” Widjojo said.

Officers cordoned off the area with caution tape, and a bomb squad from Travis Air Force Base was called in to investigate. Businesses were told to lock their doors, and customers were led out of back exits as a precaution.

Within hours, the street was reopened and the bomb was taken to an unspecified firing range to be detonated, police said.

“We were kind of in shock,” Diehl said. “Later on, it kind of sank in a little bit like, ‘Oh my god, this could have been the worst day ever.’ ”

The next day he questioned Jake on why he would even bother to pick up a grenade.

“I told him he’s not playing in the mud down there no more,” Diehl said. “He’s an adventurous little sucker, so I don’t know.”

The grenade turned out to be a foreign explosive, according to a spokeswoman from Travis Air Force Base.

But the appearance of such an explosive in Benicia is not that unusual, Widjojo said.

“Benicia was an arsenal back in the day,” she said. “We would get this from time to time. It’s not an every week kind of thing, but from time to time we would get calls from people uncovering munition or things of that nature.”

For nearly a century, the arsenal in Benicia served as the primary U.S. Army Ordnance facility on the West Coast, said Elizabeth d’Huart, executive director of the Benicia Historical Museum.

The nearly 300-acre arsenal reached peak activity during World War II, when it was responsible for manufacturing, repairing, packaging and shipping munitions and weapons, she added.

The arsenal is now known as Benicia Industrial Park — a 2-minute walk from where Jake found the grenade, 54 years after all military operations there ceased.

“They didn’t get hurt, and hopefully it’s a good lesson,” Diehl said. “Now, it’s just a good story that he’ll have the rest of his life.”