Man dead after explosion in south Tucson scrapyard

The military ordnance that exploded in a Tucson, Arizona, scrapyard and killed a worker was an Mk 82 general-purpose bomb, police said Thursday.

A Tucson police officer was flagged down after the explosion and found the employee already deceased, according to the Daily Star report.

They say it’s unclear what the ordnance was doing at the scrap yard or how it got there.

The MK-82 is a 500-pound bomb about 5 feet in length, according to military websites.

Police say the man’s name is being withheld until his relatives can be notified. They determined that he was a cutter, and cut into a metal, military ordnance. “Ordnances are not metal to be reused for recycling”, she said.

McCain wants the Defense Department to explain how a bomb wound up in a Tucson scrap yard, where it exploded and killed an employee.

Master Sgt. Joshua Gray, an Air Force spokesman in Washington, D.C., said Thursday night that an investigation is ongoing. No other ordnance was found.

Officials with Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, which is located in Tucson, told NBC station KVOA that it an inventory was done after the blast and no weapons are missing.