Has anyone else heard this story about Telford?

Question

In December 1990, my family and I moved to Telford in Shropshire, UK. I was 9 years-old at the time and Telford was my home until September 2001 when I moved to Chichester, West Sussex, UK to attend University.

While at University a friend told me that during the (then) recent Gun Amnesty, someone had handed a Russian Anti-Tank Missile Launcher into the main Telford Police Station.

This made me laugh because I'm not a fan of Telford because there is nothing there for me in terms of a meaningful future and this just made the town seem almost normal.

I believe what my friend told me and in the following years I mentioned this to other friends and we concluded that it would have taken serious money to get the device into the UK and only the more serious criminals would make use of it.

Has anyone else heard this story and how can I get a copy of the news article that reported the event? I've already emailed the Shropshire Star and I'm still waiting their reply.

Answer 1

I haven't heard this story, I live in Australia, but I have seen similar stories, and you'd be surprised how often this sort of thing happens, while it is getting harder to import illegal weapons into the country it wasn't always so and does still occur, and scarily it can be rather cheap! Even more so if you do it as some people I know of have.

A friend of mines father actually hide quite a bit of weaponary when he returned home from vietnam in a pair of speakers back when they didn't have machines that could x-ray big steel cargo containers let alone a set of wooden speakers!

I would not be surprised in the slightest to hear that soldiers continue bringing "trophies" home today

The police constantly raid people and find incredible military grade weapons, so I wouldn't be dismissing your mates story too quickly, also rocket launchers have been around a very very long time, who knows it could of been from ww2?

As long as there are people there is always going to be some nut who can get these things.

Answer 2

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/shrop...