Doofus Of The Day #444

Having decided that Ford Motor Company's behavior is too stupid for tonight's Doofus award (see the post below), I had to find another candidate. Fortunately, Doofi are in plentiful supply! Tonight's award goes to a property maintenance firm in England.

It's not every day you find an old missile in the back of your van.

. . .

Mr Talbot, 43, who runs a property maintenance business, found the weapon had been put in the back of his van by a member of his team during a routine house clearance in Leicester on Thursday.

But he didn’t know it was there until after he had driven 55 miles to a council tip at Darlaston in the West Midlands, and started to unload the rubbish. "I thought, what the hell is that? I think one of the guys at the tip was ex-Army and he said 'that looks like a bomb to me, let’s get it to the police'."

The married father of three drove carefully to nearby Wednesbury police station, where he told an officer about the device.

Within minutes there was a full-scale emergency. A 1,000ft cordon sealed off the police station and a bomb disposal team called in. Twenty officers helped evacuate a nearby block of flats, a children’s nursery and Morrisons supermarket. More than 100 residents were taken on a double-decker bus to a bingo hall for refreshments.

Junction 9 of the M6 - Europe’s busiest motorway junction - was closed, causing massive tailbacks.

. . .

The missile was likely to have been a Seacat, introduced in the 1960s and used for more than 20 years to defend Royal Navy ships against air attack.

Sea Cat missiles on naval launcher (image courtesy of Wikipedia)

There's more at the link, including a picture of a bomb disposal squad examining the truck.

I mean . . . just how does one not realize that the object one's loading into one's van is a bloody great missile, for Heaven's sake??? When Mr. Talbot drove into the police station with that in the back, I bet he instantly cured every case of constipation in the local police force!





Peter