VENTURA : Thrift Store Item Was Bomb

The metal ball with fins, on sale for $3.93, had remained unsold at the Easter Seals Thrift Store in Ventura for a month before an off-duty firefighter spotted it Thursday and advised the store to call the bomb squad.

When members of the Ventura County Sheriff’s bomb squad arrived, they identified the tennis-ball-sized sphere as an undetonated device that had been part of a military cluster bomb. Someone apparently donated it to the store, authorities said.

“It’s obvious whoever brought the bomb in wasn’t aware of what it was,” said Senior Deputy Paul Higgason of the bomb squad.

A cluster bomb is designed to release as many as 2,000 of the spheres into the air. The spheres in turn spray deadly shrapnel when they strike the ground and explode, said Marge Hays, a spokeswoman for the Point Mugu Naval Air Weapons Station.

But Hays added that, from a description of the object’s blue paint job, the device may have been part of an inert training bomb.

Sandra Stone, who opened the thrift store in November, remembered finding the metal object in a box of donations a month ago.

“I found it in the bottom of a box of toys and bric-a-brac and wasn’t sure of what it was,” said Stone. “It looked like something out of a Road Warrior movie.”