Oct. 8 (UPI) — An Illinois family said they returned home to find a wheel that had been dropped by a helicopter in midair crashed through the roof of their home.
Linda Taylor-Whitt said she and her family had just returned to their Lynwood home from eating out Saturday evening when her daughter went upstairs to use the bathroom and found the wheel had crashed through the roof and was lodged in the ceiling.
“I didn’t know what kind of wheel it was at first, I guessed it was an airplane wheel. Hysteria went through me,” she told the Chicago Tribune.
Taylor-Whitt contacted the police, who in turn called the local fire chief to come take a look at the unusual scene.
“And they couldn’t believe what they were seeing and he was like, ‘I’ve never in my life seen this.’ He said, ‘I’ve been a fireman for 30 or 40 some years,'” she told WLS-TV.
Taylor-Whitt said she received a call Monday from the owners of SummerSkyz, Inc., a flight school that operates a helicopter at the nearly Lansing airport.
“They were taking responsibility for it, and whatever needs to be done they would take care of it,” Taylor-Whitt said.
The owners told her the wheel was from a piece of machinery used to move helicopters between airport hangers and had somehow stayed attached to the aerial vehicle before falling off above her home.
