For residents in LaPorte Co., their 4th of July had a brief scare after a local woman found an improvised explosive device (IED).

Nora Schultz was doing what she does every week; cleaning up trash around her neighborhood. But on Monday, she found something a bit peculiar.

"I actually found them over here just laying up against the tree," Schultz said. "I thought, here's a jar of something. I've picked up many jars and they all have things in them but none have had the hardened gel or pipe inside of it with a wick coming out."

Schultz actually transported the jars back to her home because she just thought it was another piece of trash. But upon further inspection at her house, she knew something wasn't right.

"Maybe I'm stupid but I'm grateful it ended up here where it could be dealt with properly," she said.

So she called police to check it out.

"He took a look at it and said I'm no bomb expert, but you need to back up now," Schultz said. "That's when my skin started crawling and I thought oh my gosh."He told me, yes this is the real deal and we're going to be calling in the bomb squad."

"The Porter County bomb squad came, secured it, put it in a containment vessel and transported it out to a hay field to detonate it," Capt. Michael Kellems with the LaPorte Co. Sheriff said.

The Sheriff says they believe the bomb had a sort of homemade napalm inside of it, designed to catch fire and cause serious harm. It also had a pipe bomb and large fuses coming out from the brass top of the two mason jars. He says there is no mistake about this device. It was meant to cause harm.

"The liquid that would have exploded from the glass jars and also when the pipe is detonated, those will shrapnel as well," Kellems said. "Galvanized pipe will shrapnel and cause projectiles to go out as well. The caps certainly disconnect and go out. Any of those would be considered a lethal projectile that comes off the explosion."

Kellems was at the scene when the bomb squad safely detonated the device.

"If you look at the video when they do the controlled explosion particularly to the right, a piece of that projectile goes at a high velocity," Kellems said. "That's what causes injury and possibly death. [The IED could cause] a significant explosion that would have caused injury or death had it been around human beings and not in a controlled environment with the bomb squad."

Kellems says Schultz was in no immediate danger by moving the device because it needed to be ignited rather than an electronic or remote detonation. However, he says no one should move any suspicious item they find. They should call police to figure it out.

After the explosion, Kellems says police were able to gather evidence from the pipe inside of the mason jars and says they may be able to figure out who made the bomb from it. There are no suspects at this time.

"We believe this is an isolated incident," Kellems said. "This is not something we've seen in the past. There is a little bit of sophistication with this and there is a little bit of time spent on the device. There is nothing to indicate any terroristic value to any of this but we don't rule out any possibility until we can continue and confirm who may have been responsible through the investigation."

As for Schultz, she's happy this didn't end worse. Especially in her neighborhood with plenty of children around.

"People need to know there is scary stuff out there," she said. "I don't expect it in my community and I certainly don't expect it in my neighborhood but boy it's here and it's scary."