CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Workers at a Cleveland salvage yard found a pipe bomb inside a car they were preparing to scrap, according to the business owner.

The Cleveland police bomb squad was called to McMahan's Wrecking on West 65th Street and Storer Avenue at about 2 p.m. Tuesday after workers discovered the device, a Cleveland police spokesman said.

The bomb squad unit used a robot to detonate the device in the business's back lot, owner Don McMahan told cleveland.com.

The device was found Tuesday afternoon when employees raised up a Saturn they were preparing to scrap, and it rolled out from the car's cabin, McMahan said.

McMahan picked the device up, shook it several times, and felt what seemed to be sand inside of it. He said that he now believes that substance was explosive material.

The device was plastic, oblong and about one foot in length. It had caps on each end, a hole drilled into it and wires coming out the side, according to McMahan.

MacMahan said that police were a "little scared" when they realized what the device was.

MacMahan's Wrecking received the Saturn on Saturday, and it sat in their lot until Tuesday afternoon. Prior to that, it had been impounded in Westlake, MacMahan said.

The Cleveland police spokesman has confirmed that the device was a pipe bomb.

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