Woman: explosive found in mailbox

MOBILE, Ala. (WALA) - Mobile police said its bomb squad was called out this morning to the Mobile County Sheriff's Southside Sub-Station, on Highway 90,  for a report of a suspicious device.

The bomb squad dismantled the device with a tool that cuts the explosive in half. 

On lookers watched as a lone bomb squad officer, dressed in dark green Flak gear and wearing a helmet, set-up the tool against a brick post just outside the sheriff's office doors. The officer then walked back to a staging area officers had set up yards away.

Moments later, a quick and highly controlled blast knocked the tool onto the pavement. Afterward, officers moved the tool to the back of the building, setting it up this time next to a tree.

"Fire in the hole," yelled one officer, followed by a 'pop.'

Corporal Christopher Levy said, "The first attempt was unsuccessful. There were no explosions, the tool used by the bomb squad cuts the device in half."

 Bobbye Godwin,80, turned the device over to deputies Thursday.

"It was long and black, looked like a piece of iron and it was heavy," said Godwin.

Godwin said she found the device in her mailbox.

"I picked it up carefully and took it in the house of course should have left it, I didn't," said Godwin.

That was on July 5.

"I'm 80. I made it this far. I don't want nothing to happen to me until I go a little bit farther," said Godwin.

Godwin didn't have a car the day she found it, so she waited to turn it in.

"Well, I would have carried earlier, but I didn't have a way to get it there," said Godwin.

Godwin and her daughter drove to the Sheriff's sub-station, where she handed it over to them.

"So I picked it up carefully, I carried it in -- in a napkin, put it in that bag, and I didn't touch it until this morning," said Godwin.

Mobile police said the device was an explosive, they have turned the case over to the FBI.