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Missile dumped at US gun amnesty 'Missile launcher' is weapon case
(7 days later)
A man in Florida surprised police by handing in a surface-to-air missile launcher during a gun amnesty in the city of Orlando. An object handed in to Florida police and identified as a surface-to-air missile launcher was actually a carrying case for an anti-tank weapon.
Under the no-questions-asked scheme, "Kicks for Guns", anyone who surrendered a firearm would receive trainers or $50 (£25). Police in Orlando were initially quoted as saying the object was a launcher - a story carried by media organisations, among them the BBC News website.
The Orlando Sentinel newspaper said the man exchanged the rocket launcher for designer footwear for his daughter. But it was in fact a case for a TOW - a "tube-launched, optically-tracked, wire-guided missile", experts say.
He told the newspaper he found the 4ft (1.2m) weapon in a shed last week. The man who handed it under a gun amnesty was given a pair of trainers.
The unidentified man said he had tried in vain to get rid of the launcher, which is designed to blow aircraft out of the sky. He told the Orlando Sentinel newspaper he found the 4ft (1.2m) object while tearing down a shed.
"I took it to three dumps to try to get rid of it and they told me to get lost." He handed it in on 17 August.
"I didn't know what to do with it, so I brought it here," he told the newspaper. Orlando police were running a no-questions-asked scheme called "Kicks for Guns" where anyone surrendering a firearm would get trainers or $50 (£25).
Besides the missile launcher, Orlando Police collected more than 310 guns during the amnesty.
After inspecting the rocket launcher, police spokeswoman Sgt Barbara Jones said: "I tell you, you never know what you're going to get."