London Woman Found an Object in Her Backyard Shed From WWII That Had Police at Her Door Within Minutes

Among the garden tools and pots in her backyard shed, a British woman found an old and potentially dangerous piece of history.

“I was taking away some old tools and then I discovered this thing tucked away in the corner," Irene McColloch from the London borough Bromley's West Wickham neighborhood told the London Evening Standard.

That thing turned out to be an undetonated WWII bomb.

Unexploded bomb safely removed today from an address in Bromley .... #history #worldwar pic.twitter.com/bb4f99Z8us

— Sgt Gareth Starr (@MPSBeckenhamSgt) May 13, 2015

Instead of calling 999 — the country's version of 911 — right away, she slept on it, deciding overnight that she had better phone police about it.

"I didn’t call 999 because I thought ‘well if it’s been there for 25 years it can’t be that much of an emergency,'" she told the newspaper.

And yet, seven minutes after calling, several police cars were at her door. A London Metropolitan Police spokesman told the Evening Standard that specialists came to retrieve the 2-foot-long shell and dispose of it.

"People in local buildings were advised to leave while the shell was made safe," the spokesman said.

McColloch said she doesn't know where it came from, but told the newspaper that her husband was known to "[pick] up a lot of old stuff."

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Front page image via Shutterstock.