Roads were sealed off and bomb experts called after a Canvey dad dug up a mysterious cylinder - that turned out to be a garden roller!
Naomi Winn feared for her children's lives after her husband struck a metal object as he dug a vegetable patch in their garden.
Only after bomb disposal experts were called and neighbouring roads cordoned off did the authorities realise the three feet long cylinder was nothing more than a garden roller.
Mrs Winn, 34, of Wilmslowe, Canvey, said police called bomb disposal experts when she showed them what husband Darren had found.
She said: "The policeman said 'I'm not going near that' and immediately called for the bomb squad. We have got seven children, so we weren't taking any chances.
"We are always digging up bricks and things from the garden, and at first I thought it was an old pipe.
"This is going to be our veggie patch, and if the kids had been digging here and it had been a real bomb, we would never have forgiven ourselves."
Police immediately sealed off roads and advised neighbours to stay away from windows while a bomb disposal team was called from Colchester.
The roller also fooled the experts, who painstakingly removed earth from its edges until they realised they weren't dealing with a bomb at all.
Mrs Winn, whose children are aged between two and 14, added: "I feel so embarrassed - I just called the police and told them I had found something and I didn't know what to do about it.
"They had someone here within ten minutes. We had to wait on the other side of the house until we knew what was going on, but the police and the bomb squad were brilliant and said to call straight away if we come across anything else we are unsure of."
A spokesman for Canvey police confirmed an officer attended and that the object looked dangerous enough to take action.
She said: "It did look quite realistic to the officer, so we sent backup down there and called the bomb squad, who arrived pretty quickly."
Garden scare - Naomi Winn with the roller cylinder that fooled bomb disposal experts
Picture: MAXINE CLARKE
Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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