WSOC TVSHELBY, N.C. — A bomb was stuffed inside a teddy bear then left in the middle of a local neighborhood.
Experts are going over the device piece-by-piece trying to figure out who built it.
“We found something. It looks like somebody tried to make a bomb out of it and we have it right here in our possession and I want to know if ti’s possible you can come get it,” the 911 caller said.
“It got gasoline and look like it has some stuff on it too. It has a wire hooked to it too,” the caller went on to say.
“Well, don’t touch it anymore, OK? Leave it where it’s at,” the dispatcher.
Channel 9 reporter Ken Lemon talked to the man who called 911.
He said his cousin found the bear on the side of the road while delivering papers near Lattimore Thursday morning.
He said the teddy bear was small.
He realized there was more to it when an object fell out that smelled like gasoline and had wires attached to it.
The man then brought it to his home near downtown Shelby on West Graham Street and something dropped out of it.
The cousins placed in on the corner of their porch and called 911.
Neighbor Jessica Burge was stunned. She has a preschool aged son.
“I’m just trying to figure out why would you put a bomb in a teddy bear in the first place. If anybody would have picked it up it would have been a child,” Burge said.
“You look at the damage it could do to people around it,” said Shelby Police Chief Jeff Ledford.
The ATF has the bear and the bomb.
A federal crime lab will take it apart and inspect it.
The Cleveland County Sheriff’s Department is looking into how it got left on the side of a country road.
“(We’ll) try to clear this up as quickly as we can and may try to prevent something like this from happening again,” Ledford said.
Sheriff officials here have found sound explosive devices on rural road before.
Investigators said this is the first time one was placed in a child’s toy.
Anyone with information is asked to called Cleveland County Sheriff’s Office at 704-481-TIPS or Shelby Police Department at 704-484-6845.
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