Optical Illusion?—

Search For Possible Parachutist

Proves Inconclusive

By Andrew Gorosko

After investigating reports that a parachute was seen rapidly dropping from the sky amid turbulence that occurred during a severe thunderstorm last week, police found those reports to be inconclusive.

Police Lieutenant James Mooney said that police took a variety of steps on June 5 in seeking to determine whether a parachutist actually came down amid the Fairfield Hills’ vast agricultural fields north of Wasserman Way during the intense midday storm.

Among those measures, police had Newtown Hook & Ladder volunteer firefighters extend the fire company’s 105-foot-tall aerial ladder vertically at four different locations from which firefighters atop the ladder, using binoculars, sought to spot any possible parachutist who had landed in the area, either in hayfields or trees.

Later on June 5, the state police methodically scanned the area using their helicopter in seeking to find any parachutist who may have landed, but found none.

Several schoolteachers at Newtown High School had reported to police that they saw what they believed to be an incompletely deployed blue parachute plummeting to the ground in the area generally west of the school at about 12:23 pm, as the intense thunderstorm hit the area.

Police said they contacted the Federal Aviation Administration to learn whether there were any aircraft flying in the area at that time, and learned that there were none. Also, police checked for any corresponding reports of missing persons, but no one had been reported missing.

Police said they later located a cluster of small blue mylar balloons near Oakview Road and showed them to the people who had reported a plummeting blue parachute during the storm, but the witnesses said that those balloons were not the object which they had seen.

Oakview Road lies between the high school and Fairfield Hills. A 54-unit condominium construction project is underway there.

Officials theorized that the object spotted falling through the sky during the storm may have been a blue construction tarp that had become detached from its connections and blown up in the sky.