Elderly woman brings stack of guns to police station

Sunday was no ordinary day for the desk officers at Yarkon Precinct headquarters in northern Tel Aviv.

An elderly woman entered the northern Tel Aviv building and handed over to the police a small stack of rifles and other firearms, cases of bullets, handguns and magazines.

The woman, 75, explained that she and her son had found the stash in a secret compartment in her apartment that was built especially for the collection by her late husband and hidden behind a bookshelf.

Officers were stunned to find among the collection a sniper rifle from 1890, Kalashnikov rifles, five handguns and more.

According to the woman’s story, her husband died from an illness a few months earlier. Two weeks before his death, he phoned his son, who lives in England. He told him about a hidden stash in which he had placed weapons and ammunition he had taken from the IDF at various points in his life.

The husband, it bears noting, was a lieutenant colonel in the artillery corps who became an architect after retiring from the military. He served in several wars, and reportedly collected the weapons, some of which are not standard IDF issue, during those wars.

The family asked the police officers to donate the weapons to the Bait Hatothan Artillery Corps museum in Zichron Yaakov.