Magnet fishers pull 105 mm shell from New Jersey river, bridge closed

One cast off a New Jersey bridge turned a normal magnet-fishing outing into a live emergency scene. A magnet fisherman pulled a World War II-era 105 mm artillery shell from the Passaic River near De Jessa Memorial Bridge in Lyndhurst, and police shut the bridge down for about 40 minutes while the Bergen County Sheriff’s Bomb Squad checked the find.

The shell came up just before 8 p.m. on Thursday, June 26, 2025, near the span that links Lyndhurst in Bergen County with Nutley in Essex County. Lyndhurst Police Detective Captain Vincent Auteri said, "It was determined that the shell no longer had a fuse," and police later said the object posed no explosive threat. By then, the bomb squad had already taken control and the shell had been placed into secure custody for proper disposal.

The response is the exact line magnet fishers need to recognize: once a find looks like ordnance, stop touching it and stop moving it. Canadian National Defence says magnet fishing can turn up dangerous objects including knives, firearms, sharp metal, bombs, rockets, grenades, artillery shells, flares, mortars, and hazardous residues. Its guidance for suspected unexploded explosive ordnance is simple and uncompromising: do not disturb the item and contact authorities.

That caution matters most near bridges and busy waterways, where a single mistake can force road closures, put bystanders at risk, and complicate the work of police and bomb technicians. The Lyndhurst response showed how fast the hobby can shift from treasure hunting to public safety. The shell’s age did not make it harmless, and the decision to clear the area quickly was the right one.

The find also fit a longer pattern. In a 2019 Monongahela River case, experts believed a recovered object was an unloaded post-World War II American howitzer 105 mm shell, and the Hays Army Ammunition Plant had made 105 mm shells from 1942 to 1970 at a rate of 250,000 a month. That kind of history is part of magnet fishing’s appeal, but the Lyndhurst shell made the boundary clear: when the pull looks military, the next move belongs to the bomb squad, not the magnet line.