"Mythbusters" accidentally shot cannonball thru home and hit minivan

Danny Tse
Danny Tse Posts: 5,206
edited November 2012 in The Clubhouse
This happened today about 8 miles from where I live. LOL
A cannonball fired as part of an episode of the "Mythbusters" television show missed its mark and hit a Dublin home and a car Tuesday, authorities said.

The six-inch steel projectile was launched Tuesday afternoon from an Alameda County bomb range but misfired, careening off a hill before going through a home on Cassata Place and then coming to rest in a parked minivan, said sheriff's Sgt. J.D. Nelson.

No one was hurt, according to the Alameda County Fire Department.

The cannonball was supposed to have passed through several barrels of water and a cinderblock wall, Nelson said. But the cannon lifted up from its intended trajectory, and the cannonball missed the water, instead hitting the wall and a nearby hill before crashing through the home and vehicle, he said.

Jasbir Gill, 42, whose 2000 Toyota Sienna was damaged, expressed relief that his family wasn't injured. But he said he was angry about what had happened.

"I'm angry and lucky to be alive," Gill said. "Anybody could have been hit by this."

Gill said he was home with his three children, ages 8 to 13, when a neighbor came over, reporting what she believed to be vandalism by someone throwing rocks at his minivan. Gill peered inside and found the cannonball, which shattered the right front passenger window and hit the dashboard before coming to rest on the vehicle's floor.

The sheriff's office operates a bomb disposal range less than a half-mile west of the neighborhood. Mythbusters has used the site - adjacent to Santa Rita Jail in Dublin - in about 50 previous episodes, Nelson said.
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