Posted on 04/05/2006 7:23:20 PM PDT by rawhide
A Ventura educator remained hospitalized Tuesday after a decades' old round of military ammunition he used as a paperweight exploded in his classroom, authorities said.
Robert Colla, an instructor at the Ventura Adult Education Center for five years, suffered severe damage to his right hand when the device detonated Monday afternoon. None of the more than 20 students in his computer drawing class was injured, officials said.
Co-workers said Colla found the large piece of ammo — believed to be a 40-millimeter round — when he was a child and thought it was harmless. It was a regular fixture in his classroom.
"This is not something he just found last week," said Barry Tronstad, director of the center on Valentine Road. "It's something he played with when he was a little boy."
Tronstad said Colla worked in the mechanical drafting industry before joining the adult center, where he began as an instructional assistant and moved up to instructor. "He's just an excellent teacher," Tronstad said. He said Colla was in his mid-40s and married with school-age children.
Administrators at the center and the Ventura Unified School District are still investigating, but witnesses said Colla was using the paperweight either to bang an object on his desk that was making noise or to get the students' attention.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
This man is lucky he is alive..
The local radio station here is hoping someone has a video of the event.
It didn't explode spontaneously. He smashed it down on a bug on his desk, which dented the primer cap. 40mm is pretty big to set off in one's hand. Even a .45 could cause some burns and cuts.
Good thing he wasn't banging it on a student who was making noise.
...a "40-millimeter round?" That would be a grenade as far as I know (the kind fired from launchers).
He's lucky he didn't get a piece in his eye.
LOL!
He shouldn't be a teacher if he doesn't know you should not bang on a live round...
Tragedy is when I break a fingernail. Comedy is when you fall in a manhole and die. - Mel Brooks
I recall someone finding a Civil War shell and using it as a doorstop. Which was really cool until it blew up.
It was probably not a grenade but an artillery round, anti-aircraft.
I am really curious as to where he grew up that he found a live forty millimeter round just laying around waiting for a little boy to pickup and take home.
My favorite is some old revo war cannon shot that were submerged or somesuch in a certain kind of soil. The unstable exp. material had metamorphosed into something entirely different. They were on display for months/years in one of those triangle deals that cannon shot is always stored. And one day they started glowing red-hot. That just had to cause the proprietor to second-guess the decor!!!
As paramedics wheeled Mr. Colla out of the school, he was heard saying, "Gee, it never did that before!"
Good point. the old 40mm Bofors Pompom was widely used as antiaircraft round in WWII. Probably the propellant burned, but the warhead didn't go off (it is designed not to until a certain number of rotations after launch.)
Still, without a barrel around it, he is lucky it wasn't worse.
I think that National Guard armories have a progam that encourages ordinance to be reported, and they can arrange for someone to come and Xray it to see if it is a hazard.
Be safe! A finger is a poor trade for the coolness of a paperweight.
I would hate to make rash assumptions, but maybe they should check to be sure some wacked student didn't re-dangerfy a genuine de-milled dud? Just to make sure. Can't go by a news article necessarily, they just get the main gist if lucky...
I would hate to make rash assumptions, but maybe they should check to be sure some wacked student didn't re-dangerfy a genuine de-milled dud? Just to make sure. Can't go by a news article necessarily, they just get the main gist if lucky...
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