The Johnson County Sheriff’s Office bomb squad removed a live grenade from Shelia Hood’s Needham home in 2011.
Daily Journal Archives
News from around Johnson County as reported on Nov. 16 in the pages of the Daily Journal and the Franklin Evening Star from the last 111 years.
On this day in 2011, one of the stories on the front page of the Daily Journal was about an unsettling souvenir found in an attic — a hand grenade.
A Needham Township family had lived for years with a grenade tucked into a trunk filled with heirlooms in their attic. They had thought it was a dud.
Resident Sheila Hood had the grenade on her mind when she went to the opening of the Indiana National Guard Armory in Franklin. She lived less than two away from the armory, passed by it daily and watched it get built.
She was curious to see what the new 168,000-square-foot facility looked like. At the end of a tour, she waited until her group dispersed and approached the soldier who had guided visitors through the facility.
Hood told Chief Warrant Officer 2 Darren Minnemann that she had an old grenade in the attic and that she’d like to donate it to the armory as a historic artifact. She asked if soldiers could come over and inspect it.
Minneeman became concerned because Hood didn’t know for sure if the grenade was live or not. He advised her to call police and have a bomb squad check it out.
As it turned out, the grenade still had a fuse that would cause it to explode if the pin were pulled, Johnson County Sheriff Doug Cox said. The pin was only halfway in the grenade when the bomb squad found it.
A Johnson County Sheriff’s Office bomb squad X-rayed the grenade, determined it had an intact fuse and removed it from the century-old farmhouse, Cox said. The plan was to detonate it at Camp Atterbury.
Hood was shocked to discover the grenade still had a fuse inside and relieved when police took it safely away.
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Other memorable Johnson County stories from this day
1996
Rising numbers of restaurants were testing the county’s inspection force.
1995
A Giant rhea, an ostrich-like bird, was on the loose after hopping a fence in Franklin.
1963
Franklin’s favorite son, Roger D. Branigin, was expected to announce his bid for governor later that month..
