© JOSH EDELSON/Getty ImagesMcNally said she bought the machete-containing-sofa on Facebook Marketplace.
82-year-old Shirley McNally sat comfortably on her sofa for a full year before making a shocking discovery: a massive Rambo machete tucked behind the couch cushions.
According to the Southend Echo, McNally saw the couch for sale on Facebook Marketplace and purchased it in March 2020. But, she recently decided to sell it after her 33-year-old grandson, Keenan McNally, called its pattern "disgusting."
Before parting with the couch, McNally wanted to give it a clean. "I decided to give the sofa a quick Febreze and a hoover before the next owner came to collect it," she said. It was then that she made the alarming discovery. "I put my hand down the side of the cushions and felt something hard," she recalled.
"I couldn't believe it when I pulled out a huge Rambo machete."
McNally said nothing seemed amiss when she first purchased the sofa, at least not enough for her to suspect it contained a lethal weapon. "These two slightly unsavory guys arrived in a van with the suite-to drop it off-but it was alright," she said.
After enjoying the couch for a year, however, McNally decided to put it up for sale in April.
"My grandson said, 'Nan, that is absolutely awful,' and told me it's the sort of sofa you find in an old people's home," McNally said. "Then I began to hate the darn thing so I put it up for sale."
Once it sold, she said, "I thought I better freshen it up a bit and give it a bit of a Febreze spray and take off the cushions to make sure nothing had fallen down the side." That's when she felt something wedged in the side of the sofa, which she initially believed to be "loose change."
"My first reaction was: 'Oh my god!' It's got the leather sheath and everything," she said. McNally also noted that the machete is extremely heavy and "could chop somebody's legs right off."
Not knowing what to do with the weapon, McNally reportedly called Essex Police for advice. They told her to bring the knife into the police station.
The idea that the weapon had unwittingly sat in her couch for so long upset her, but she is glad she discovered it before the sofa-and the machete-found yet another home. "Imagine if I'd given the sofa away with it still there," she said.
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