Toy Rocket Puts Town On Red Alert

Word that a live Air Force rocket had slammed into a backyard shed got this community of 2,000 scrambling on Tuesday: the block was evacuated, an Army bomb squad was called in, and police fretted about detonation.

It turned out the weapon was merely a model stuck with Air Force decals.

“We’re just glad it was a toy,” court clerk Marsha Neagley said. “You just never know these days.”

The hullabaloo began when Adrian Ashworth found a cylindrical, 18-inch, finned white projectile protruding from his shed.

He alerted authorities because of its official-looking decals and numbering, thinking it could have been fired from Elgin Air Force Base in Florida, about 100 miles southwest.

After about four hours, specialists from Fort Benning, Ga., determined that it posed no danger.

“I thought it was a hobby rocket, but I didn’t know for sure,” Ashworth said. “I wish whoever fired it would come up and patch the hole in the roof.”