A primary school in the UK's Derbyshire had to be evacuated after a student brought a hand grenade to a show-and-tell assembly on Friday (May 16). The bomb disposal squad was also called to the school as a precautionary measure and to safely ensure the grenade's disposal, according to a report in The Independent.
The boy brought the grenade to the Osmaston CofE Primary School in Ashbourne, with the staff not expecting him to turn up with a World War II explosive device. Head teacher Jeanette Hart was unsure if the device was live, but still took it away from the child and carefully placed it behind a tree in the car park, not wanting to cause panic..
"It was quite an eventful assembly. It was going fine and there was a boy who brought an old bullet case in, which I knew about, but then his friend produced a hand grenade from his pocket," Ms Hart told BBC.
As the school was cleared and emergency services called, the children became inquisitive about what was happening.
"The children didn't really know what was going on but they knew something was different and they were excited because they saw the police and because they were playing out when they would have been in school."
Also Read | What Is Codex? AI Coding Agent By OpenAI That May Replace Software Engineers
Afterwards, the Derbyshire Police X-rayed the grenade and determined that the grenade was safe. The local police, meanwhile, praised the "quick-thinking" staff.
‘We even got to see those (X-ray) images and were told a detailed analysis of how there was nothing that would set the grenade off," said a spokesman for the Matlock, Cromford, Wirksworth and Darley Dale Police Safer Neighbourhood Team.
As per the report, the boy had picked up the grenade, a family heirloom, without informing his parents. Ms Hart had a "little chat" with the boy after the incident, where she got to know that he brought the item innocuously.
"We'd been talking about VE Day and he knew it was from the war and just thought it was an interesting thing," said Ms Hart.
