2 World War II-Era Shells Unearthed

A construction worker doing landscape work at a home in La Jolla dug up an 8-inch target practice shell that Army explosives officials said does not contain explosives.

That was a good thing for Nicolo Grassa of El Cajon, because, when he found the shell, corroded and covered in rust, he thought it was a rock.

“So I hit it with a jackhammer,” he said.

Grassa found the shell about 11 a.m. Thursday, but police didn’t know about it until the owner of the house in the 5400 block of Beaumont Avenue called them later that night.

The Explosives Device Team of the San Diego City Fire Department picked it up just after midnight Friday, and it was later turned over to Army explosives officials for disposal.

The 76-millimeter Army target practice shell was designed with a built-in tracer, so when it was fired from a cannon during practice, the shooter would know where it landed, said Capt. Marc Sisk, commander of an Army explosive ordnance disposal team at the Naval Submarine Base on Point Loma.

Although no markings on the shell casing were readable, Sisk guessed that it probably was a leftover from a World War II firing range.

In an unrelated incident, a live 75-millimeter armor-piercing shell was found by a crew of city workers clearing brush on the edge of a canyon in the 11100 block of Tierrasanta Boulevard about 11 a.m. Thursday, said Russ Heyneman, a technician with the city’s Explosives Device Team.

Unlike the shell found in La Jolla, this one, made in 1943, had explosives in it because it has what appears to be a fuse, Sisk said.

The shell “was shot out of a gun and designed to penetrate a tank,” he said.

Over the years, numerous shells and artillery rounds have been found in the Tierrasanta area. The community of condominiums and single-family homes, built in the 1970s, was an artillery range for the Marine Corps during World War II.