A guy was rendered speechless when a sizable, heavy metal item dropped off the wing of a passing passenger airliner and struck the ground in front of him.
When the cylinder collapsed in front of him while he was standing outside the state capital building in Augusta, Maine, screener Craig Donohue of the Maine Capitol Police was only a few feet from tragedy.
Last Friday at approximately 12.30 p.m., two witnesses stared in terror as the aircraft’s metal sleeve jolted the ground. Shocked Donohue subsequently informed his wife that he “nearly died.”
The Augusta State Airport and the Federal Aviation Administration were both made aware of the event.
Stunned Donohue said that if he had been moving 10 seconds more quickly, the item “would have left a fairly good mark” since it weighed “seven or eight pounds descending from the sky unannounced.”
He also revealed that he received a hard helmet as a joke from his coworkers to guard against potential debris falling from the sky.
The metal sleeve, according to the FAA, may have fallen from a big passenger jet’s wing flap and hit the ground quickly in front of Donohue.
He glanced over after hearing a “loud thump” and saw the item bounce three to four feet in the air before it “rolled towards me and stopped exactly at my feet.”
The strange, greasy item, which he thinks to have fallen from an aeroplane due of its size, was then picked up by him.
When they heard the item drop, two other persons who were on the street approached Donohue and questioned, “What the heck is that thing?”
According to Donohue, the cylinder wasn’t “heated and molten,” which led him to abandon the hypothesis that the item may have fallen from a space station.
The father picked up the item and gave it into his police unit because, according to him, he didn’t think his coworkers would believe him when he returned to work.
He said that the nearby airport had ordered him to remove the oil and check the item for a serial number, but he was unable to do so.
Donohue then hastily texted his wife, saying, “just so you know, I nearly died,” along with a photo of the item.
Donohue said that the situation was shocking but added: “I’m just thankful nothing occurred and no one was wounded.”
According to Donohue, the FAA has visited the crash site a few times since the incident and thinks that given the size of the item, it likely came from an overseas aircraft.
Because of his success, everyone advised Donohue to purchase a lottery ticket, but he quipped that he may have “spent my luck up.”
The state’s public safety agency issued a press release stating that “the six to seven pound sleeve-like item fell at a high velocity roughly six to eight feet from Capitol Police Screener Craig Donahue who was strolling outside the entryway.”
According to the press release, “The FAA has begun an investigation while seeking to determine the source of the component, which is presumably from a major aircraft on an international route.”
According to the press release, the FAA sent alerts to planes that were passing over the region at the time of the incident.