A cannonball fired during the taping of the television show "Mythbusters" at the Alameda County Sheriff's Department bomb disposal range missed its target and ended up some 700 yards east in the neighborhood of Tassajara Creek.
The crew was filming an episode of the hit Discovery channel show around 4:15 p.m. when the misfire occurred. According to reports, the cannonball was to strike a few water-filled barrels and a concrete wall but instead, the cantaloupe-sized projectile flew over the barrels and went through the wall before taking an unfavorable bounce that sent the ball careening off a hillside towards the neighborhood.
The cannonball touched down in front of a home on Cassata Place, blasted through the front door and up the stairs, through a bedroom where three people were sleeping and exited through the wall. From here, the projectile crossed Tassajara Road, taking out several tiles from the roof of a home on Bellevue Circle before coming to rest on the floorboard of a Toyota Sienna minivan in a driveway on Springvale Drive.
The owner of the van, Jasbir Gill, had just pulled into the driveway 10 minutes earlier with his 13-year-old son. Nobody, including the three occupants in the bedroom that the cannonball blasted through, was injured.
The television crew had used the bomb disposal range during the taping of more than 50 episodes in the past several years without incident. Katherine Nelson, a publicist for the company that produces "Mythbusters" issued a statement Tuesday night saying that the production company is assessing the situation and working with those whose property was damaged.
Photo courtesy of Michael Short.