Airports Catch Seniors Carrying Swords in Canes

It may sound ridiculous, but swords hidden inside of canes are a disturbingly common problem for airport security. They’re almost always carried by elderly individuals more interested in walking than in stabbing, and the sword-wielding seniors generally profess to have been utterly unaware that they were carrying weapons, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Lori Massaro didn’t know her cane was a multifunction device, but she got the third degree when officers discovered the potentially deadly secret. “She said to me, ‘I don’t want to hear any stories, people get locked up for this,’” she recalls. Eventually Massaro, like most of the unwittingly weaponized seniors, was allowed to board. But the inadvertent lawbreakers never see their canes—which are often antiques—again. “It was beautiful,” laments Massaro. (More airport security stories.)