US Boy working in yard finds World War II bomb

The bomb was found near Fort Indiantown Gap in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, on Monday.

It started as a typical day for Tyler Varvel.

Varvel said he was spraying to keep weeds down on a bank at the edge of the family yard when he saw something unusual.

"It was shiny, so I flicked it up with my shoe and it landed right here. It was a bomb, or a mortar or something," Varvel was quoted by the WGAL news as saying.

He took a picture with his cellphone, stepped away from the mortar and called his mom, who just happened to be near the state police barracks in Lickdale and went in to get help.

 

"The lady at the desk, her eyes got kind of big and said, 'Oh yes.' I said I don't know what you call it, maybe it's a bomb, but we found it in our back yard," said Lora Varvel.

State police said they followed Lora Varvel to her home and quickly shut down the roadway to traffic. Police moved a growing number of people away from the device.

"They kept telling everybody to step back little further," Lora said.

Members of the State Police Bomb Detection and Disposal Unit used an X-ray device to determine the mortar was inert and not a live round.

They later determined Varvel had stumbled upon a World War II-era mortar.

The practice round may have been left behind by someone decades ago, police said.