Someone spotted something in the water at Cooley Landing in East Palo Alto that looked like a hand grenade, pulled it out, and set it on the ground before calling police. The discovery prompted East Palo Alto Police to cordon off the area as a precaution while a county bomb squad was called in to assess and ultimately dispose of the item.
Bystander Pulled Item From Water Before Calling Police
According to NBC Bay Area, East Palo Alto Police investigated a report of what appeared to be a hand grenade discovered in the water at Cooley Landing after the person who found it removed the item and placed it on shore before notifying officers. Police treated the item as potentially hazardous until it could be evaluated by trained bomb technicians, the station reported. A bomb squad arrived at the scene around 2:45 p.m., authorities said, and the item was assessed and safely disposed of.
The way the object was handled runs counter to standard safety guidance. Under California Peace Officer Standards and Training protocols, members of the public who come across a suspected explosive device are advised never to touch, move, or alter it, and instead to leave it in place and alert law enforcement immediately, since moving unidentified ordnance increases the risk of accidental detonation, per the California Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training.
County Bomb Squad Called In
A county bomb squad was called to Cooley Landing to assess and dispose of the item.
It remains unclear how long the item may have been in the water or where it originated.
A Park Built on Decades of Buried History
Cooley Landing has a layered past. The peninsula served as a county landfill where residents dumped and incinerated trash before toxic cleanup and its reopening as a public park in 2012, as detailed by the M-A Chronicle. The former dump was covered during cleanup.
Long before it became a dump, Isaiah Woods's wharf plan for Cooley Landing dates to 1848, while Lester Cooley purchased the territory in 1867. That layered history of a 19th-century site, a landfill, and a 21st-century public park makes the origin of the find — whether old military surplus, a buried relic, or something more recent — an open question.
A Park Co-Managed by the City and Midpen
Today, Cooley Landing Park and Education Center is a city-operated park open daily from sunrise to sunset that regularly hosts community events, according to the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District.
The area includes nearby tidal marsh habitat for Ridgway's rails. For now, the item at Cooley Landing has been rendered safe, though exactly how it ended up in the water remains unknown.
