VIDEO: Unexploded grenade found by Aldwick teenager

Kieran Stanley was stunned when he discovered the wartime weapon outside his home in a quiet cul-de-sac.

He had just thrown it on to the pavement in Tangmere Gardens to get rid of the mud which surrounded the object he had picked up. Only rust was holding together the explosive believed to date from the Second World War.

He said: "I was excited when I first found the grenade.

"But, when the bomb disposal squad said it was live, I began to panic when I realised that it could have gone off. It would have blown me up and the house."

The drama began at 6.30pm last Tuesday (April 15) Chichester High School for Boys pupil Kieran was riding on his go kart along the pavement in front of his family's home with his friend, Ollie Burn (13), nearby.

Kieran spotted what he described as a big lump of mud on the pavement.

Its heavy weight when he picked it up led him to think it was a piece of copper.

He threw it on the ground to dislodge the mud coating only to find himself looking at a grenade.

He took his unexpected discovery indoors to his parents, Kevin and Cheryl, and Ollie's dad.

Everyone was shocked by his find. A quick phone call to the police said the officers arrive to call into the Royal Navy Bomb Squad.

The police evacuated Kieran's home and made sure the properties either side of the detached house were empty as well to set up an exclusion zone.

Kieran and his parents sat in their car at the end of their road to watch the drama unfold.

"The bomb squad looked at the grenade and said it was live," Kieran explained.

"The only thing holding it together was rust because the pin had come out of it.

"They said it was really lucky that it hadn't blown. They took it in a box of sand and took it away."

The incident took about two hours before the all-clear was given to move back indoors.

Mystery surrounds the presence of the grenade. The most likely explanation is that it fell off the latest of a series of waste skips which Mr and Mrs Stanley have used while they have been carrying out extensive work in their back garden.

This has involved digging deep into the earth.

A large number of Canadian troops were stationed in the area during World War Two to provide a possible clue to the grenade's origins.