Dad finds Russian bomb while magnet fishing with daughter, 10 – and takes it home with him

A dad found a live Russian WWI bomb as he went magnet fishing with his 10-year-old daughter – and then took it home with him.

Martin Bailey, 31, had been out with his daughter Keira on Walton-on-Thames for an hour on Thursday, when they caught the bomb around 7.30pm.

The body shop technician from Surrey ‘looked it up and down, but couldn’t really tell what it was, as it was all caked in mud and rusty as hell’.

He and Keira then took the bomb home with them, when Martin texted a pal a picture of the WWI explosive from in his back garden.

Martin said ‘my friend told me to get straight onto police’ – and within 15 minutes, at least four cop cars turned up with a firearms unit to inspect the device.

He claimed the police told him, as he waited in his upstairs flat, that he’d fished out a live 1915 bomb of potential Russian origin.

Martin said one of the policemen added: ‘I’ve been in the service for 30 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.’

Bomb disposal arrived to take the device away at around 10pm.

Martin, who started magnet fishing five months ago, said he ‘couldn’t believe that we’d happened to come across the bomb’.

He doesn’t know how long it’s been there and whether or not there are others nearby.

Martin said: ‘Since I’ve started, I usually just get pennies and rubbish like that. But lately I’ve been magnet fishing with Keira, who enjoys it too.

‘We were out on the river for about an hour, and then it started raining. We’d not caught anything, so I said to Keira – “Right, one last go!”

‘We then got this bomb.

‘I texted my pal when I got home, who said I should call the police. They arrived almost as soon as I’d spoken to them, and they spent a lot of time with the firearms unit trying to work out if it was live and what exactly it was.’

A spokesperson for Surrey Police said: ‘Residents in Inwood Court, in Walton may have noticed a number of officers in the area earlier this evening.

‘We were called to the road at 7.20pm following a report that a suspected piece of military ordnance had been found.

‘Explosive ordnance officers attended and the item was taken away and safely disposed of so there are no safety issues at all.’