Failed 'Mythbusters' Stunt Sends Cannonball Shooting Through a Calif. Home, Minivan!

The Discovery Channel reality TV show Mythbusters, which seeks to support or debunk popular myths and widely-held beliefs by recreating stunts and experiments, is busted. In a test that went awry Tuesday evening, a Mythbusters' cannonball collided through a Dublin, Calif., family's  home and minivan.

According to the local KTVU news station, the cannonball was supposed to smash through a few barrels of water and a cinder block wall to slow it down. What ended up happening was a misfire that caused the ball to shoot down into a neighborhood below the hillside where the stunt was taking place.

Watch the local ABC News report:

KTVU has more on the story:

The projectile bounced in front of the house on Cassata Place, through the front door and up through the second floor before it finally exited through the back wall.

Then it flew over Tassajara Road and ricocheted off the roof of another house before smashing through the window of a minivan where it came to rest.

"I kind of looked inside and seen a big old cannonball. And I had just got out of the van five minutes earlier," said Jasbar Gill, the owner of damaged van. "I'm glad my kids weren't inside the van. So lucky."

Fortunately, no one was hurt in the incident.

Here is the AP News report with footage of the front door and comments from the minivan owner:

KTVU goes on to report that Mythbusters is deeply sorry over the misfire and said the bomb range where the test was taking place had been used for the show's experiments many times before:

"They're very sorry that this happened. And they have safety measures that are in place," said [J.D. Nelson of Alameda County Sheriff's Department], who works as a consultant for the show, managing the tests run at the county bomb range. "They did have a misfire. And they have insurance for these kinds of things."

[...]

"We never even had any kind of an incident let alone anything this terrible," Nelson said.

The Daily Mail reports that earlier in the day, Mythbusters had tweeted the show was "working with heavy artillery", but the posts were later removed.

The bomb range is closed while an investigation as to what went wrong occurs, according to the Daily Mail.

This article has been updated since its original posting with new video.