Gift Becomes Smithereens
The U.S. Navy blew up china, but it wasn’t an international incident.
A Christmas gift of fine English china was blasted into small pieces after officers on this Atlantic Ocean island suspected that the box in which it was delivered carried a bomb, the base commander said Wednesday.
Security guards became suspicious when Tiller Ming, 70, a delivery man for the prestigious Bluck’s store, sped onto the base Saturday and, they said, threw the package out.
“We could not identify the box without moving it, so we placed a device next to it to neutralize it. Unfortunately in doing so we broke the china,” said Capt. Joseph Phelan, commanding officer of the base.
Bluck’s spokesman Peter Darling denied that Ming had done anything wrong during the delivery. “He couldn’t get past the sentry because the base was closed,” he said.
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