Police evacuated the lobby of their building and closed down
City Hall for 10 minutes after a woman walked into the station
Wednesday afternoon with a Word War II-era mortar.
Police evacuated the lobby of their building and closed down City Hall for 10 minutes after a woman walked into the station Wednesday afternoon with a Word War II-era mortar.
Officer Felix Figueroa saw Gilroy resident Ursula Kros struggling to use the elevator to get up to the second floor of the Gilroy Police Department at 12:47 p.m. Wednesday. He noticed the woman was carrying a 6-inch by 8-inch wooden box and asked what she was carrying, Kros said.
She showed him a metal egg with fins, unscrewed at the middle and lying in two pieces. Figueroa recognized it immediately as a military explosive.
“He almost had a heart attack,” Kros said. “A goofy old woman comes in with a hand grenade.”
Figueroa then placed the mortar – which Kros was bringing to police to destroy – in a nook where the front steps curl around toward a 15-foot wall on the west side of the building and called in the San Jose Police Department’s bomb squad. Police promptly evacuated the station and nearby City Hall.
“We don’t know for sure if it’s live, but we’re treating it as such,” Sgt. John Sheedy said as police cordoned off Hanna Street between Sixth and Seventh streets.
Kros’ stepdaughter found the explosive while she was cleaning out Kros’ fiance’s house on the 9200 block of El Caminito Drive. The explosive, a police investigation revealed, belonged to the fiance’s uncle, who had served in World War II. The stepdaughter’s husband – a member of the U.S. Coast Guard – recommended Kros take the mortar to the police station for disposal. She was on her way to the lobby when Figueroa happened upon her.
“If I had known it was going to cause such a big stir, I wouldn’t have come,” Kros said.
City Clerk Shawna Freels was in her office when a city engineer came in and told her, “We’ve got a situation,” she said. “It was a little scary.”
She closed the City Hall doors and sent out several e-mails to assuage city employees’ fears. Within 10 minutes, the doors were open again.
Police kept the police station parking lot – where the explosive lay – closed from about 1 to 4 p.m. while San Jose officers in a large protective suit diffused the explosive. Gilroy police also closed the station lobby and records office and, after reopening City Hall, kept its west side shut to employees. All these areas have glass windows that could be shattered by an explosive blast, Sgt. Jim Gillio said.
City employees continued to work during the bomb’s diffusion, as did police, who were safe in their new building. Early evaluations of the explosive revealed that it was not much of a threat, Gillio said.
“If it was going to blow up, it would have been an explosion with lots of noise and not shrapnel,” he said.
Despite the scare and disruption of business, police will not arrest Kros because she never meant to cause any trouble, Gillio said.
“This wasn’t her device and she tried to do the right thing,” he said.
