Police said Tuesday they are grateful that a World War II-era grenade — live and volatile — made the 68-mile trip from a secondhand store in Duluth to a sister outlet in the far reaches of northern Wisconsin and didn't go boom in the back of a box truck with other donated items.

An alert employee spotted the Japanese-made tool of destruction just after noon Jan. 27, after the shipment arrived for sorting at the Goodwill in Ashland, Wis. That set in motion the grenade's eventual destruction by a law enforcement bomb squad.

"It was intact with all its functioning parts," Ashland police Lt. Brandon Marten said. "It was relocated to a safe area and detonated."

The bomb squad from the Marathon County (Wis.) Sheriff's Office "determined that the grenade was live," he said. Given that it was indeed a live explosive, "it would likely be very unstable. That would be my opinion, based on all the facts."

Scott Vezina, director of communications and marketing for True North Goodwill, which is based in Duluth and has 11 sites, said a worker was "sorting through a bin and came across the item. Because of his keen eye, he got it."

From there, 911 was called, and about two dozen customers and staff members were directed out of the building while the grenade was placed on the ground between two dumpsters, Vezina said.

The bomb squad, which had to travel some 160 miles from Wausau to northern Wisconsin, arrived about three hours later and moved the grenade to a safe location outside of the city for its destruction, Marten said.

"We don't have any facts that anybody was trying to harm anyone," Marten said. Even so, he said police want to find and talk to whoever was responsible for the grenade ending up in Goodwill's donation stream.

The lieutenant said police get calls about old grenades "more frequently than you would think, and we treat them all as if they are live. They've all not been live, but this one was the real deal."

Vezina said he hopes that the publicity around the live grenade's discovery will get the message out: "Please don't donate weapons."