Errant 102-pound shell zings over MN home

Couple: A 'sorry' would be nice after stray Ripley shell

Excerpt:

Two weeks after a wayward 102-pound artillery shell fired from Camp Ripley, Minn., narrowly missed their house and plowed an ugly path through their woods, a central Minnesota couple is still shook up.

"We haven't gotten an apology," Kathy Nelson said Wednesday night of the April 7 incident at her longtime family home just south of Pillager.

One of eight inert wax-filled rounds fired during a test by BAE Systems, a defense company, flew almost 8 miles off Camp Ripley property onto Kathy and Rich Nelson's 80-acre property, according to Capt. Ross Nieber of Camp Ripley.

The shell streaked over the Nelson home, startling three remodelers, two of whom were outside sawing cabinetry materials.

"I was upstairs and had the window open and I heard this loud ppsshh, like a giant bottle rocket being set off, and it wasn't three seconds and it was right over us," said Loren Patnode of Patnode Custom Cabinets of Brainerd, Minn. "We were just amazed -- we knew it was something big. It was like a bomb going off, like something from a movie."

The round slammed into trees behind the house, went underground, then resurfaced and hit more trees, Patnode said.

The Nelsons, who were not home at the time, have lived in the area for decades, said they've never had anything similar happen.

"If people hadn't been here and seen it, we wouldn't have found the shell until hunting season," Kathy said. "At first when we called Camp Ripley, they said every round was accounted for, and my husband said, 'Oh no they're not. That evening one of their guys came up our driveway and said, 'I'm wondering if we lost something,' and Rich said, 'You sure as heck did.'"

The Nelsons had tracked the shell by its damage trail, but stopped short of approaching it in case it was live.

Comment: See linked article for photo of the shell