A scout troop working on an Eagle project on the Canal Trail found four sticks of ammonium nitrate-based explosives this morning.

The explosives would have be properly assembled to detonate, Major Tommy Hathaway of the Roanoke Rapids Police Department said, and were deemed safe.

The assistant scoutmaster of Troop 411 brought the explosives to his house and didn’t realize it was explosive until putting his reading glasses on. He promptly called authorities.

“It was a safe substance,” Hathaway said on Westover Drive, where Jerry Owen took the explosives and other items picked during the cleanup effort.

The explosives

It is unclear why the explosives were on the Canal Trail, Hathaway said. The substance is sometimes used for stump removal.

Hathaway said the State Bureau of Investigation Bomb Squad determined the explosives had been on the Canal Trail for about a year to a year and a half.

Owen said this was the first day of physical work for the scouts on the projects, which consists of picking up large items of trash on the trail.

There were four sticks the size of flares in yellow, plastic containers, he said.

It didn’t occur to Owen at the time it could have been an explosive because large amounts of other plastics were also picked up.

When taking them home to sort through he saw, after putting on his reading glasses, the words highly explosive. “As soon as I saw and read those words I called the police.”