San Diego
A military explosive device was found in a canyon near Balboa Park Sunday evening and police and fire officials cordoned off the area while the Fire Department’s bomb squad removed the device.
A spokesman for the bomb squad said that if the device had exploded, it could have seriously injured the children who stumbled upon it at 6:55 p.m. in a canyon in the 1900 block of Bancroft Street, just east of Balboa Park.
The device is known as a simulator projectile ground burst and is used in training to simulate combat conditions. Fire officials said they had no idea how the device got to the canyon.
In 1983, two boys were killed in Tierrasanta when an artillery shell they found exploded while they were playing with it. The area where they found the shell was a World War II artillery training range.
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