A bomb squad was called to an Illinois home to remove an 'old war relic' grenade believed to be from World War II: police

• A bomb squad removed a grenade discovered by a construction crew from an Illinois home.
• The "old war relic" may have been a training grenade from World War II, CNN reported.

Police say a bomb squad was called to an Illinois home to remove a decades-old grenade discovered by a construction crew.

Authorities said the "old war relic" may have been a training grenade from World War II, CNN reported.

The home in Westchester was undergoing renovations on September 7 when a construction crew discovered "what they believed was essentially a war-time grenade," Westchester Police Department Detective Sergeant Michael Fellers told CNN.

The crew was able to move the grenade outside and notified the Westchester police, who called the Cook County Bomb Squad to remove the grenade, the Village of Westchester said in a Facebook post. The grenade was then destroyed, CNN reported.

The grenade's explosion "would have been like a big firecracker," Fellers told CNN. Authorities believe it was a WWII training grenade, which would still contain a detonating charge that could be dangerous, the outlet reported.

Fellers told CNN that authorities believe the home was previously occupied by a military veteran who collected weaponry, though he said it's uncommon to discover wartime explosives.

In August, California authorities removed what they believed was a WWII grenade and artillery shell from a home in Palo Alto. Authorities took the grenade to a park and detonated it after burying it and covering it with sandbags, according to Palo Alto Weekly.

In 2019, a Florida man found a WWII hand grenade while magnet fishing, though authorities later determined it was non-functional as the firing pin mechanism was broken, according to USA Today.