GARDAÍ were evacuated from Ennis Garda Station for four hours this Monday morning after a live grenade found during renovation works was brought to the public office of the station.
The old grenade was unearthed by workmen at a house in McNamara Park on Monday morning. They picked up the device and it was brought to Ennis Garda Station at approximately 10am.
Superintendent Brendan McDonagh of Ennis Garda Station explained that “Workmen working on doing up an old house in the McNamara Park area of Ennis came across this old grenade. It was buried and while they were doing the work they unearthed this grenade. It was very old so they decided to pick it up and bring it into us here in Ennis Garda Station, which was very nice of them”.
“The garda in the public office got some shock. He would have got a bigger shock if it had gone off,” he added.
The grenade, which was established as still live, was quickly brought outside the garda station to the car park and was isolated there. Meanwhile staff working in the station adjoining the car park were evacuated until the army EOD team arrived at 2pm.
The army EOD team then took the device away to a quarry to safely dispose of it by way of a controlled explosion.
Gardaí conducted a full search of the area where the grenade was uncovered to see if there was any other viable devices buried there but the search turned up nothing.
It is not yet known how old the grenade was or how long it was buried there.
By Carol Byrne
A native of Ennis, Colin McGann has been editor of The Clare Champion since August 2020. Former editor of The Clare People, he is a journalism and communications graduate of Dublin Institute of Technology.