By Alex Ginsberg
Residents of a six-story apartment building in Sunnyside were evacuated from their homes after one resident found a grenade in a hallway Sunday morning, police said.
Ricardo Pelaez, 21, said he saw the weapon lying just outside the door to the garbage chute adjacent to his second-floor apartment at about 11:30 a.m.
“I didn't know if it was real or fake,” Pelaez said, although he said he had no trouble recognizing what is was.
Pelaez immediately called police, who evacuated the building and summoned the NYPD bomb squad. Residents of the approximately 80-unit building stood across the street or waited in the nearby playground for more than two hours while police removed the device.
“The whole building was surrounded by tanks, and police were making sure nobody was going in to the building,” said one woman who declined to be identified.
She said the incident was difficult for elderly residents like herself.
“I wasn't even dressed,” she said. “I couldn't even move. I have a bad back, and I couldn't stand in the street for so long, so I had to sit in a Laundromat.”
The device was removed without incident and taken to the Police Department's firing range at Rodman's Neck in the Bronx, police said. No determination had been made by Tuesday as to whether the device was live.
