Gunner’s Mate 2nd Class Aaron A. Booker charged with grenade theft
According to Stars & Stripes, Gunner’s Mate 2nd Class Aaron A. Booker stole 20 MK3A2 concussion hand grenades from a locker aboard USS Pinckney, a San Diego-based Navy destroyer. Only 15 sailors had access to the locker containing 60 grenades. An inventory early last year revealed the loss of 20 grenades at about the same time that Booker was transferring to a new assignment at Great Lakes.
Booker denied involvement in the loss to NCIS investigators;
About a month later, on April 20, 2017, the grenades turned up — or most of them.
An off-duty Orange County sheriff’s deputy was driving on Interstate 15 in northwest Arizona and spotted a backpack leaning on a guardrail on the side of the road. The black backpack was standard-issue military with “GM2 Booker” handwritten on an inside tag.
Arizona highway patrol officers and the FBI found inside 18 grenades with the same lot number as the missing explosives.
In a second interview, Booker admitted that the bag was his and that he’d taken the route, but said the backpack had been stolen from him about a year ago after he’d left it in the Pinckney’s armory. He stated he was especially upset about the theft because the bag had a GM pin on the front that was hard to replace.
Then he called NCIS and told them that the two missing grenades made their way to Tijuana with a motorcycle club.
He was arrested yesterday.
Category: Navy
A classic example of not being the brightest bulb in the pack, sharpest knife in the drawer, or as a certain E-9 I used to associate with would say, “One dumb sonovabitch”.
Not the brightest candle on the menorah
Up VT north, EOD just disposed of a WW2 pineapple style grenade that was spotted in the mud near a boat access area.
Live grenades left roadside for anyone to find and do with what they will. Thankfully, an off duty LEO found 18 of them. The remaining two grenades are (or were) in the hands of bad guys. His thievery will be the means by which one or more lives will be taken or have been taken. And he was pissed at his CO for some disciplinary action? 10 years in Leavenworth sounds about right to me for A-A-Ron.
This never gets old.
^^^^^THIS^^^^^^^
😀 😀 😀 😀 😀
I’m thinking this wasn’t a real well thought out plan on GM2 booker’s part.
He probably thought “Hey, I have access to the grenade locker and nobody else is looking. I could totally steal some grenades!”
I think he took his business plan from the Underpants Gnomes on South Park:
1. Steal grenades
2. ?
3. PROFIT!
“Live grenades left roadside for anyone to find and do with what they will”
That’s the real crime here. Stealing them for one’s personal use is bad enough but leaving them for some poor unsuspecting individual to find is out right terrorism. Convict and hang.
Now he’s gonna be Gunner’s mate in the pen…Thor’s big hairy brother.
How does someone so monumentally stupid make it to E-5?
Had a chief one time that said we don’t catch the smart criminals.
County Sheriff told me if they ran out of stupid criminals he’d be out of business.
A LEO friend of mine once told me that they have no time to chase down smart criminals because the stupid ones keep them busy 24/7.
A “Weapons Grade Stupid” tag certainly applies for GM2 Booker, soon to be SR Booker in new housing.
Military Times is stating they weren’t even frag grenades, they were flash-bangs. Enjoy your stay in Kansas, dipshit.
7 oz of tnt is a little more then a flash-bang:
The MK3A1 had a water-resistant laminated-paper body and top and bottom caps made from die-cast metal. The top had a threaded fuze well in the center. It originally used the M6A1 fuse, which had a four to five second delay. It was upgraded to the M6A2, and then the M6A3 fuze sometime in the early 1940s and the M6A4D fuze in 1944. The grenade contained 7 ounces [0.20 kg.] of flaked TNT filler.
It can be identified by its black body and a yellow band pasted across the middle marked “Grenade, Hand – Offensive MK.III A1” in black lettering. It differs from the MK3 in having a fuze well that is flush with the surface of the top cap.
The grenades weighed 0.69 lbs. each.[3] The MK3, like all TNT-filled grenades and bombs, were shipped without their fuzes as a safety measure. They were packed in cardboard storage tubes in crates of 24 or 50. Fuzes were shipped separately in boxes containing 25 fuzes.
More Info:
MK3A2 Offensive Hand Grenade (Concussion Grenade)
Used to produce casualties during close combat while minimizing danger to friendly personnel. The grenade is also used for concussion effects in enclosed areas, for blasting, or for demolition tasks. The shock waves (overpressure) produced by this grenade when used in enclosed areas are greater than those produced by the fragmentation grenade. It is, therefore, very effective against enemy soldiers located in bunkers, buildings, and fortified areas
Secondary missiles and fuze pieces may be projected as far as 200 meters from the point of detonation.
Sounds like a great piece of fishing gear, similar to a DuPont Spinner.
Also good for discouraging those pesky sappers when they swim up to the ship with magnetic explosive devices and bad intentions. The Active sonar works pretty well, too.
That’s just a different kind of fishing.
True, but it certainly gets more interesting when the “fish” can sink your ship and kill you. More skin in the game, yes?
And the active sonar is no joke, either. On high power it’ll boil the water near the sonar dome, and turn any nearby critter’s insides into jelly. Sappers included.
I have to admit that I’m disappointed int Hooler’s – er, Booker’s lack of initiative.
He want to Great Lakes, for Pete’s sake, possibly the most quiet place on the map, so far off the beaten path that you can’t even find the front gate because Dr Who hid it in the Tardis.
And this dope went to all that trouble of stealing grenades loaded with half a pound of TNT each, which could have brought some excitement to the county, but he left them sitting in his backpack by the roadside. He could have gone grenade fishing up at the fishing pond near the state line, but NOOOOO! He had to leave that stuff by the roadside in his backpack.
He is truly a fine example of someone who is dumber than a box of spent missile parts.
Dude be dumb. It should be illegal to be so ‘weapons’ grade stupid. See what I did there?
Well, dipshit, enjoy your 10/+/- years getting your rectum exploded on a routing basis.
Jeez, the only thing he didn’t do was advertise on Ebay or Craigslist.
Instant promotion from GM-2 to DSC. For those not familiar with the DS rate, it stands for Dick Stepper. Not to be confused with CS (Crank Stepper)
Once upon a time, before terrorism, when I was in Germany, someone discovered that there was a case (I say again case), of frags missing from our ammo dump. They locked down the whole Kaserne. The married folk, mostly NCOs and Os, were quite unhappy having to sleep wherever they could find a place and eating in the mess hall.
Since I had been on guard duty at the ammo dump the night before the discovery I had the interesting and educational experience of being interrogated by CID for several hours at Div. HQ. At one point I grinned, amused by their clumsy good-cop/bad-cop routine. They were not amused.
A couple of days later the grenades were allegedly found, and all was well. As far as I could tell they never improved the security around the dump, which was pretty pitiful even for those halcyon days.
School the squid, how large is a case of fragmentation grenades? I can see 20 or so individual, baseball-size grenades in a ruck, but an entire case?
And heavy, too. I have always thought that someone screwed up and just misplaced or overlooked it, but that would have made someone look bad. Much better to blame some outsider. The story I heard was that the grenades were found in the back of a 2 1/2 ton truck parked in the motorpool, so it wouldn’t surprise me if it had just been overlooked during shipment.
Dipshits will do dipshitty things….
That ought to get him at least a couple of decades in the USDB at Fort Leavenworth along with a DD.
And if the USS Pinckney boarding detail needed them for an urgent or ad hoc mission, and the required basic load wasn’t there, it’s a life and death issue …
Yes but did he get his GM pin back?
What would a Navy ship need with concussion grenades? I know what Marines do with them, but I have no clue what the Navy would use them for? Anti swimmer charges?
Changed his mind / chickened out then found out there were two grenades missing and tried to do the right thing???
And how often are you suppose to inventory arms and explosives on board a ship? And did they do it on time?
I would like to know how the grenades got left on the side of the road
Did he indeed sell it to someone who lost it off a motorcycle?
Did he get cold feet and ditch them?
By the side of the road in a bag with his name on it?
I think that for all the taxes I pay, that I should be allowed to shoot off some Ordnance once each year.
How about a few rounds out of an automatic grenade launcher?
That would be good compensation for all the money the government takes out of my check!