BOMB ALERT: PC Dave Tozer with resident Sue Simpson.

AN Eastleigh man slept through a major alert after a fake mortar in his front garden sparked a bomb scare.

Neighbours were evacuated and a street sealed off after police were taken in by a device they had spotted on Mark Simpson's doorstep.

It was more than two hours before bomb squad officers gave the all-clear after discovering it to be just an old fire extinguisher that had been made to resemble a wartime bomb.

Former double-glazing installer Mr Simpson said: "It has been in the garden for more than a year. I found it in an old skip and it was obviously a fake. I brought it home and was going to paint it white and let the kids play with it. I just didn't realise it would cause all this fuss."

The alarm was raised by Eastleigh police officer Dave Tozer, who was on duty in Chadwick Road yesterday when he spotted the 18in-high rusty extinguisher.

He said: "I am not an expert and it looked like a bomb to me. I thought it might be an old mortar. "In the past we have had people who have walked into police stations with live grenades so it's best not to take any chances."

Sue Simpson said her husband had slept through the drama after taking medication.

"I was coming home from the shops and one of my neighbours flagged me down and said the bomb squad were outside my house. It was so embarrassing."

A spokesman from the Aldershot-based Royal Logistics Corps said: "From our initial identification we could see it was homemade memorabilia or a souvenir someone had made."

Converted for the new archive on 25 January 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.