TSA Discovers Ice Pick Inside Handle Of Cane At Newark Airport

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- It may be Christmas Eve, but one cane at Newark Liberty International Airport was filled with something slightly more sinister than candy.

Transportation Security Administration officials said a New Jersey man in a wheelchair tried to bring a concealed ice pick through security on Thursday morning.

Ice picks are interpreted as weapons and are not allowed through security checkpoints, WCBS 880's Levon Putney reported.

Officials said agents detected something was off in the handle of the Maplewood man's cane after he placed it on a checkpoint conveyor belt to go through an X-ray machine.

"As he was going through the x-ray machine, a TSA officer who was staffing the x-ray monitor noticed something unusual in the handle," TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein said.

Upon further inspection, the agents discovered a steel ice pick attached to the cane's handle.

"...And it looked like it was fairly weathered," Farbstein said.

A Port Authority spokeswoman said police pulled the older man out of the line and found he was no threat.

Port Authority police confiscated the cane and an officer gave the man another cane from the airport's lost and found so that he could catch his flight, officials said.