Blue Sky Plaza Update

Right now police are still investigating what at first appeared to be a live hand grenade in the parking lot of the Blue Sky Plaza found Thursday. Today we spoke with someone who has real life experience with the device.

“Theres a black flash. It’s not like on TV, there’s no flames.”

Cleve Anderson, a Vietnam veteran, tells us.

“There was a 32 day battle and out of our 148 man company, 6 marines were standing… and I wasn’t one of them.”

He has 3 purple hearts and was on 23 search and destroy missions.

He explains to us what could have happened if Thursday’s suspicious object had in fact been a live grenade. “It would probably blow a little dent in the concrete, maybe break a couple windows. I mean it’s intense, but it’s just this little black blast.”

Around five p.m. Thursday a citizen called in the suspicious object which was located in the Blue Sky Plaza near the DMV.

Lt. Mike Budreau of the Medford Police department says, “It appears to be a hand grenade. At this point we’re just trying to keep the public safe.”

Authorities quickly blocked off the surrounding area and part of Progress Drive. Soon after, OSP bomb squad arrived to detonate the object.

Anderson explains how it works,

“They’ve got their little robot, with a certain charge, they can send it over set the explosives on it and it will set this explosive off.”

Upon detonation, they discovered what appeared to be a grenade was in fact, made of plastic — but with one hitch…”It does have some wires in it, some circuitry, it looks like it’s supposed to do something,” says Budreau.

And tonight, police are still trying to put the pieces together.

Anderson is just glad everyone is safe, “The police handled it the only way they could, because public safety is their number one.”

No one was injured in yesterday’s incident.

Police have still not released exactly what the object was.

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