Partygoers thought they'd built a clever gender reveal device. It turned out to be a deadly pipe bomb
Family members had hoped to build a contraption for a fun gender reveal party in Iowa, but they instead built an explosive device that killed a grandmother, police said Monday.
"This family got together for what they thought was going to be a happy event with no intent for anyone to get hurt," Marion County Sheriff Jason Sandholdt said.
Pamela Kreimeyer, 56, was killed when a piece of shrapnel from the device struck her in the head at the Saturday soiree in rural Knoxville, about 40 miles southeast of Des Moines.
Members of Kreimeyer's family got together Friday to begin experimenting with "different types of explosive material" in hopes of creating a gender reveal device and recording the unveiling for friends and family on social media, the sheriff's office said in a statement.
"On Saturday afternoon five family members and the expectant mother gathered and placed gunpowder in the bottom of a homemade stand that was welded to a metal base plate," the sheriff's statement said.
They drilled a hole in the side of the stand to install a fuse and placed a piece of wood on top of the gunpowder, before adding colored powder indicating the baby's gender, the statement said. The idea was that once the gunpowder ignited, it would launch the powder into the air -- typically blue for a boy or pink for a girl.
But when the family members placed tape over the top of the metal tubing, they inadvertently created a pipe bomb, authorities said.
Once the device was lit, the metal tubing exploded, sending shrapnel flying, the sheriff's office said.
A piece of metal hit Kreimeyer, who was standing with family members about 45 feet from the device, killing her, the statement said.
The chunk of metal moved with such velocity that after slamming into Kreimeyer, it continued to travel more than 400 feet through the air, landing in a field.
Kreimeyer was killed instantly, police said. ...