Visit to Police Open House Proves a Happy Dud

A Westchester man stumbled on a mortar shell while housecleaning Saturday, and assuming the worst, he loaded the explosive in a car and drove two blocks to the nearest Los Angeles police station.

And although the vintage shell was a dud, no one knew for sure until about 11:15 a.m., when police declared safe the area around the Police Department’s Southwest Division station on West Martin Luther King Boulevard, Sgt. Tim Tyree said.

Frank Nalepa, 35, took his discovery to the station at 9:45 a.m., pulling up to the curb at the station’s front doors with the 8-inch-long, 60-millimeter shell in the back seat.

The Westchester man, who said he found the shell in a garage while helping relatives clean out a Harvard Boulevard house to ready it for sale, suspected his find was an inactive souvenir but vowed not to take chances. “Instead of leaving it for the next owner, I figured I’d take it to somebody who could dispose of it properly.”

Police reacted by closing off a one-block stretch of Martin Luther King Boulevard and evacuating people from an auto repair shop and a restaurant across the street, Tyree said. Bomb squad officers were then called to examine the device and haul it away, he said.

Meanwhile, inside the station, about 20 officers who were on duty were told to go to the back of the building and stay there while the mortar shell was investigated. Another 70 or so people, including police and local residents attending the station’s first open house, were already milling about a parking lot in the rear of the building.

“We were real low-key about it,” Tyree said, noting the open house was held behind the station and away from the commotion. “And they thought it was part of our everyday routine.”