Small but potentially explosive device safely removed from Rockton home

Rockton Police announced that residents had been storing a "potential explosive device" at a home for over five years. The homeowner in the 700 block of Wingate Place, in the north part of Wingate Place near Wyndham Lane, told the police about it this afternoon, Monday, Oct. 2, 2023, and asked them to remove it. The neighborhood is two blocks north of the Swedish American/Stateline Clinic on Rockton Road and three blocks east of Dorr Road.

Rockton officers called on the Winnebago County Sheriff’s Office Bomb Squad to take a look. Upon arriving, the technician called it a "smaller device" and Rockton Police announced at 3:06 p.m. that it had been "rendered safe and removed." 

According to their website, the seven-member Winnebago County Sheriff’s Office Bomb Squad gets deployed 60-80 times a year, responsible for "detecting and disrupting" explosives in most of the Stateline area. The county SWAT team also includes one bomb technician in case it's necessary to blast through a barricaded door. Though not a full-time assignment, bomb squad training takes at least sixteen hours each month, sometimes at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama. The team works closely with military and federal Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) experts.

On September 23, three bomb squad deputies were injured while defusing dynamite in a trailer in Newark, WI, west of Beloit. 

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