A fisherman pulled an unexploded, decades-old artillery shell from the Passaic River in Bergen County on Thursday, according to Lyndhurst police.
The shell was extracted around noon from the water near the De Jessa Memorial Bridge, which connects Lyndhurst in Bergen County with Nutley in Essex County along Kingsland Avenue.
It was the second such device to be pulled from the river in less than three years.
“(The fisherman) had been using a line with a magnet when he pulled out an artillery shell believed to be from the World War II era,” said Capt. Vincent Auteri, a spokesman for the Lyndhurst Police Department.
As police closed the bridge and nearby roads, the Bergen County Bomb Squad removed the shell from the area.
The bridge and local roads were closed to traffic for about 30 minutes as the bomb squad conducted its investigation, Auteri said.
Investigators later determined the device no longer had an active fuse and likely posed no danger.
On July 16, 2022, magnet fishermen found an unexploded artillery shell in the Passaic River near the same bridge but closer to Route 21 in Nutley.
Police removed the shell to a safe location, where it was destroyed, authorities said at the time.
In a 2022 interview, magnet fishermen told NJ Advance Media they have retrieved numerous objects from the Passaic River, including guns, a truck mirror, a bullet, fishing lures, a shotgun barrel and gym weights.
On July 4, 2022, the same fishermen said they found an ATM machine, along with six handguns, at the bottom of a lake in Branch Brook Park in Newark.
