NOLA - 7th Ward resident runs over bomb while cutting his grass

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Jamal Elhayek was cutting the grass in the lot next to his 7th Ward home when he heard a loud pop. Smoke started billowing from under his lawn mower, and when he turned it over to investigate, he found a partially exploded bundle of bullets and shotgun shells, wrapped in cardboard and duct tape with a paper wick.

New Orleans police said what Elhayek ran over Tuesday in the 1600 block of North Robertson Street was an improvised explosive device. The bomb squad removed what was left of it.

Jamal Elhayek gestures Wednesday to his lawn mower after running it over a homemade bomb in the lot next door to his New Orleans residence.

Elhayek said the explosion was loud enough that his partner, Jackie Sumell, came running outside to see what had happened. He moved the mower and began looking at the pieces of the bomb with Sumell and their housemate. When they found a red shotgun shell and the homemade wick, Sumell decided to call the police.

Sumell "said, 'I thought you were dead,'" Elhayek recalled. She was "still shaking" Wednesday, he said, and it has unsettled him as well.

The lot he was mowing is a former children's play garden known as the Seventh Ward Boys and Girls Rainbow Garden, where neighborhood kids would do homework, make art and learn to garden. It closed during the pandemic.

Elhayek said he thought the explosive device came from a nearby house that was frequented by drug users who were recently evicted and that he called "a hot mess." He figured the device was probably carelessly tossed from the house.

He said the police, as well as FBI agents and homeland security officers, came to investigate.

If his lawn mower wasn't metal, he doesn't know what would have happened. If plastic, the bullets might have cut through the mower and hit him. Elhayek said an officer told him he was lucky to have his legs.

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