The truth may be out there, but South Florida police agencies say they’re not going to spend any more resources looking for it.
South Miami – CBS4 news, November 30, 2009
As of Monday morning, Miami-Dade police said they had classified the case of the flying object believed to be on fire as unfounded.
“They found nothing that could conclude anything was wrong or there was anything criminal in nature,” Miami-Dade Police Det. Robert Williams told CBS4.com.
On Sunday, reports from witnesses of a fiery flying object caused officials to conduct a massive search. Police and fire fighters scoured the area by car, boat and by helicopter.
Eleven-year-old Luis Mercado and his mom said they saw the object as they were driving home from dinner.
“We saw like a giant red-like, a huge intense red ball which flew right across the side,” Mercado said. “We though it was a hot air balloon or we thought it was a plane like crashing. We didn’t know what it was at all.”
Several witnesses reported seeing the object that might have looked like a hot air ballon on fire.
Officials received those reports at about 7 p.m. from people who live in the area around Southwest 84th Street and 52nd Avenue.
“It was observed. It was noticed,” Miami-Dade Fire Rescue spokesman Lt. Eddy Ballester told The Miami Herald. “Whether it is on fire or not is not known.”
Whatever it was, it drew the attention from people in the neighborhood and officials took the report seriously enough to send 20 firefighters and launch a Miami-Dade police helicopter to search for what appeared to be a balloon. The search has since been called off.
The only thing that was recovered from all this was a small piece of mesh that a neighbor found on fire.
“I saw a piece of wire mesh — the thing that was on fire,” said Steve Prellezo, a neighbor. “It was lying in the middle of the street. I parked my car and got out and dragged it to the side of the road. There was some gravel and I just covered it up and turned off the fire.”
Firefighters are now waiting on the fire investigator to try and determine what that piece of mesh is. As of now they are not sure if it has anything to do with the fire in the sky that witnesses saw.
Meanwhile, Kathleen Bergen, spokeswoman for the FAA told CBS4.com that her agency was not involved in the investigation.
“We do not have any reports of any plane parts falling from the sky in that area,” Bergen said.
source: cbs4.com