A Maine man is undoubtedly thanking his lucky stars after he narrowly avoided being struck by a chunk of metal that plummeted from the sky and landed just a few feet away from him. The bizarre incident reportedly occurred this past Friday afternoon as Maine Capitol Police screener Craig Donahue was heading back inside the state capitol building following his lunch break. To his profound surprise, the officer suddenly heard a tremendous thud and looked over to see that a rather sizeable cylindrical metal object had crashed to the ground around 6 to 8 feet from where he stood. "It was maybe 7 to 8 pounds falling from the sky, unannounced," Donahue recalled to CNN, "and it would have been a pretty good wake-up call."
Marveling at the heft of the odd object, Donahue dutifully plucked the greasy metal piece from the ground and alerted officials at the nearby Augusta State Airport as well as the Federal Aviation Administration about the fortuitous near miss. The FAA subsequently launched an investigation into the case and the Maine Department of Public Safety indicated that the agency now believes that the object was "likely from a large airliner on an international route" and possibly part of the plane's wing flap. As one might imagine, the incident briefly led to some concern as to the safety of any aircraft that had been flying overhead at the time, however all of the planes later landed safely at their respective destinations.