01-03-2025
Live grenades removed from Freeborn County History Center
Three live grenades were discovered and safely removed from the Freeborn County History Center this week.
The history center said in a Facebook post the Albert Lea and St. Paul police departments responded on Wednesday, along with the St. Paul police bomb squad.
According to executive director Stephanie Kimble, all of the German grenades had been donated sometime during the 1960s and were from World War I.
Kimble said the center has been going through each box of collection items over the past five years to evaluate "the condition and appropriateness" of them when a curator came across one of the grenades this week.
"[The curator] came into my office on Wednesday morning and said one of [the boxes] had a grenade in it, saying she wasn't sure if it had been deactivated and what should we do," Kimble said.
Without knowing it was live or not, police were called to examine the grenade. Officers from the Albert Lea Police Department were called to the center and after taking photos of the one of the explosives, called the St. Paul Bomb Squad to respond.
While law enforcement responded, the history center was closed to the public and staff were moved to other areas of the building.
Kimble said while police were responding on a report of the initial grenade discovered, staff found four additional grenades with two of them having already been deactivated.
A video posted by the history center shows officers handling the devices carefully before taking them out of the building.
Kimble tells Bring Me The News that the process of accepting items at historical societies has changed "significantly" over time, noting that items like grenades donated would have police involved immediately. She also pointed out that the military used to allow people to take war trophies, which is no longer a thing.
Kimble said in the past there have been similar incident, such as a container of kerosine found among their collection that was handled at the center appropriately.
