Lauren Intzekiotis said a piece of history was discovered in her family’s yard in Antioch, Ill.
“I thought it was just another random piece of metal that I found on the ground,” she said. “I really didn’t think it was going to be a bazooka.”
The mother of two told NBC Chicago she was doing yard work and watching her kids play Wednesday when she noticed a piece of metal sticking out from the ground right next to her kids playset.
“I grabbed my shovel, started digging it out and found this weird thing,” she explained. “I showed my neighbor, showed pictures to my family and my dad’s like yeah, get that looked at that doesn’t look right.”
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Intzekiotis said she was able to pull the object out from the ground and ended up calling police on Thursday.
“I brought it over by the garage and called my neighbor over, do you know what this is? At first he was like, well, a pipe, some machinery part then I took some better photos of it, did some Google image searches and kinda determined we shouldn’t be touching it so we just left it there and called them this morning.”
Lake County Sheriff’s Deputies were called to her home near 3rd and Lenora Street. The bomb squad was notified. Several homes were evacuated as a precaution.
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“I couldn’t really see exactly what they were doing, but just wrapped it up in something and carried it away,” she said.
While it’s unclear how long the rocket had been buried here and why, the Lake County Sheriff’s Office confirmed it was live. The explosive device was brought to a undisclosed location where it was detonated.
“Too bad they had to destroy it,” she said. “It should have gone to a museum or something.”
Intzekiotis said she’s lived here for the past 13 years and wonders why she didn’t notice it before. “Still disappointed that they had to destroy it,” she said. “It looked cool.”
