Pipe that damaged car in Maine may have fallen from airplane, police say

Yahoo

02-05-2025

A piece of pipe that fell on a car parked in a Portland, Maine parking lot, damaging it, Wednesday may have fallen all the way from a passing airplane, authorities say.
Cam Malette, a deckhand on a Casco Bay Lines ferry, told the Portland Press Herald that a coworker called him around 10 p.m. that night to tell him that the rear windshield of his Volkswagen Jetta, parked in the ferry line's lot on Commercial Street, had been shattered. When he arrived to see the damage, he found a 35-pound metal pipe that also crumpled the car's rear hatch.
A police spokesperson told the Press Herald that based on the level of damage and the location of the parking lot in a common flight path for planes heading to nearby Portland International Jetport, it was likely that the object fell from a plane.
'(The police) came to the consensus that they think the only way there possibly could have been that much damage is if it fell from the sky. And the whole time I was thinking: 'Well, how am I going to tell my dad that my car is destroyed by something that fell from the sky?'' Malette told WMTW-TV.
He told the TV news station that he was still able to drive his car home, but needs to replace the windshield and bumper.
'If that hit someone, it would have been tragic. Thankfully, it just hit my car in the parking lot,' he said.
Police told the Press Herald that the Federal Aviation Administration had been notified of the incident and was investigating.
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