It’s a weapon that has barely changed for thousands of years, and this past weekend it was found in a local plaza parking lot.
Imagine going for a typical Saturday morning group run, when all of a sudden you spot something sharp and pointy on the ground.
“We met here at seven and we took off north here through the parking lot,” said Jason Fisher, who found the caltrops. “After our run, we were coming back through and one of the other runners stopped and noticed something on the ground. So we all went over and looked and we found about two of these spikes.”
The run group then found several others spread out in the parking lot of the West Erie Plaza.
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These objects are called caltrops. These weapons have spikes and are designed so that one point is always facing upward, no matter how it lands.
Fortunately, no one in Fisher’s running group injured themselves while passing by, but he wanted to make other’s aware of what they found to keep people safe, making a social media post that found traction in last 48 hours.
“I do know that a couple people from that Facebook post reached out and said they found these stuck in their tires in the past week or two,” Fisher recalled. “One person said it was pretty inconvenient because she didn’t have a car for a couple days and had to uber to work and the other person had just happened this past Friday.”
Fisher said the West Erie Plaza did reach out to him to get details to see if they can find out exactly how they got there on their surveillance system.
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So where exactly do caltrops come from? The vice president of marketing at Big Woodies explained their origin.
“If you’re a ninja and someone is chasing you, you drop them behind you,” said John M. Kaliszewski, the VP of sales and marketing for Big Woodies Fireworks. “Ninjas originated; they were kind of like the special forces of Japan, I would imagine that was at least a thousand years ago. Of course, the samurai out of Japan as well.”
The object has also been used to disable soldiers and animals, such as horses. Big Woodie’s sells self-defense items and “unique weaponry,” Although they don’t carry caltrops anymore because they aren’t as popular as they used to be.
“Usually people that buy these want to have them as part of their collection with knives and there’s various weapons that are unique to ninjas,” Kaliszewski said. “This is likely just someone who’s a fool and doesn’t have anything better to do with their time.”
“It’s pretty discouraging that people would just throw these out. It impacts a lot of people; you can easily step on one of these,” Fisher went on to say.
Millcreek police said they haven’t received any complaints about the caltrops.
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