Sorry for the long reply but I think its a good story.
Officer Ed Barton, with the Lebanon, Illinois Police Department was contacted by the St.Clair County dispatcher, CENCOM, at 4:12am that morning and was told to look for a UFO. Officer Barton thought the dispatcher was joking until it was made clear that the call was serious. Officer Barton then proceeded to look for the UFO and spotted it in the direction of Summerfield, Illinois. He turned on his emergency overhead lights and proceeded south on Rt. 4 and then east on Rt. 50, toward the small town of Summerfield.
CLICK DOCUMENTS FOR LARGER IMAGE: The original CENCOM dispatch tape timecode reference of police transmissions from the morning of January 5, 2000, as given to Darryl Barker after his submitting a Freedom of Information Act request in February, 2000. Barker's groundwork cleared the way for the Discovery Channel to gain access to the radio tape recordings.
While Officer Barton traveled eastbound on Illinois Rt. 50, another witness, a resident of Summerfield, observed the object for about 2 minutes at an approximate altitude of 900 feet and 800 feet distance. He reported the object to be at least twice the size of a C-5 cargo plane (222 foot wingspan). The witness said there were bright lights around the perimeter and the shape (triangular) could be likened to a boomerang, very wide. He saw no light at the rear. It moved very slowly (about the speed of a C-5 landing) and he could hear a slight sound; likened to a well-tuned V-8 engine at about 40 feet distance. The object moved westerly (toward Lebanon).
Officer Barton drove his squad car toward the UFO and pulled off the road to shut down his engine and overhead emergency lights in an effort to hear a sound from the UFO, which was still approaching him. Officer Barton filed a police report with sketches that described a very large triangular-shaped aircraft.
POLICE REPORT SKETCHES, Officer Barton; Lebanon, Illinois Police Department
The lighting on board the UFO was remarkable, as it was blinding white, (brighter than typical aircraft landing lights) with a white light at each corner of the craft. On bottom center just past the half way mark, was a red blinking light. The forward white light shot a shaft of light toward the ground, without actually lighting the ground as you expect from a spotlight. The UFO hovered at approximately 1000 feet and no sound could be heard from the object as it approached, hovered, and departed. Before its departure, the object made a stunning flat pivoting turn and then began to move slowly away.
View of rear and underside of craft as described by Officer Barton.
ARE THESE FLYING TRIANGLES? Recent Mexican Air Force Infrared camera frame from March 5, 2004 sighting. Copyright 2004 Jamie Maussan. Story coverage at RENSE.COM.
Officer Barton could see the rear of the object which displayed a full array of white light across the aft side of the craft, with a thin strip of blended, multicolored lights that ran horizontally and centered across the surface. Officer Barton reached into his squad car to radio CENCOM and tell them what he was seeing, and when he emerged from the car, a duration described as 3 to 4 seconds, he saw that the brightly lit UFO had somehow relocated to an area some 6 miles away, near the town of Shiloh, Illinois, without making a sound. Officer Barton’s communications could be monitored on the CENCOM radio channel by any others tuned to that frequency and thus a police officer in Shiloh picked up the chatter.
SHILOH, ILLINOIS
Exactly 51 seconds after Officer Barton informed CENCOM that the object was heading westbound and might be near Shiloh (per CENCOM dispatch computer timecode 4:23:57, attached to the radio transmission recordings), Shiloh police officer David Martin reported that he “saw something” but that he didn’t know what it was. Officer Martin was driving eastbound on Lebanon Avenue in Shiloh when he spotted a triangular-shaped object, with three downward pointing lights.
RECONSTRUCTION: The UFO moves along Lebanon Avenue, in Shiloh, Illinois, within 60 seconds of being observed 6 miles away near Lebanon. (Video Frame from "The Edge of Reality: Illinois UFO, January 5, 2000")
This time the lights were observed to be at the rear of the undersurface. He also noted a red and green blinking light, widely spaced fore of the three white lights. Officer Martin noted that the three white lights projected shafts of light below the craft. He pulled his car off to the side of the road and listened for any sound of engine noise. None could be heard.
POLICE REPORT SKETCH, Officer Martin; Shiloh, Illinois Police Department
The object was estimated to be the size of a football field in width. Length could not be determined. Officer Martin told me that he was able to see some detail on the bottom of the aircraft, similar to building blocks, or irregular pieces, like “plumbing”. The bottom did not appear to be a flat surface. One section of the underside appeared to be lower than another section. The irregularity of a naval battleship was used as a reference. Then, as Officer Martin was preparing to exit his vehicle to get a better look, the massive, silent triangle suddenly shot away, “in the blink of an eye”, with “no sound whatsoever” and was reported to be seen an undetermined number of miles westerly, possibly over the Belleville area. Officer Martin filed a police report and sketches.
MILLSTADT, ILLINOIS
RECONSTRUCTION: The UFO passes Milstadt, Illinois police officer Craig Stevens at approximately 4:28am. (Video Frame from "The Edge of Reality: Illinois UFO, January 5, 2000")
The watch on Officer Craig Stevens’ wrist read 4:28am when he spotted a triangular UFO moving very slowly past him near the Millstadt village park, where he was parked, looking for the object. Officer Stevens was, like other police officers that morning, tuned to CENCOM and at 4:39:27 Stevens reported to the dispatcher that he saw the object. She asked if he was kidding. “It’s huge”, Stevens replied. The UFO passed to his left and he also observed a red blinking light on the underside of the craft.
POLICE REPORT SKETCH, Officer Stevens; Millstadt, Illinois Police Department
Stevens described the UFO as having an arrowhead shape with a concave rear that sported a horizontally moving, strobing light (to visualize this, liken it to the effect seen on the front of the car in the television series “KnightRider”). The entire aft surface of the object consisted of a bank of white light, similar to the description by both Noll and Barton.
POLICE REPORT SKETCH, Officer Stevens; Millstadt, Illinois Police Department
Inverted image to clarify area of white light across rear of craft.
Perhaps because Officer Stevens reported that the object was only about 500 feet off the ground, he was able to hear a faint buzzing sound from the object, which he described to be similar to the buzz of a power transformer on a utility pole. Also, Stevens noted that the texture of the craft could be compared to the 3-dimensional blockiness of a naval battleship (reinforcing Officer Martin’s observation). Before the UFO moved away from Stevens at a leisurely pace, he also noted an effect which could possibly be an optical stealth technology. Stevens told me that he saw what appeared to be the stars in the sky above the craft, projected on its underside.
P-1: Unretouched scan of original Polaroid photo taken by Officer Stevens.
Finally, Stevens attempted to take a Polaroid photograph of the UFO as it departed, making a slow, banking turn toward St. Louis. The temperature was cold that morning, the camera was in the trunk, and the image, whether a result of cold temperature or simple insufficient exposure, revealed only four smears of light, blurred by camera motion while the camera shutter remained open. The triangular object disappeared over the trees.
P-2: Enhanced image of Polaroid. CLICK for larger image.
P-3: Enlarged area from image P-2. CLICK image to enlarge.
P-4: Enlarged, enhanced area of Polaroid photo. CLICK for larger image.
DUPO, ILLINOIS
Officer Matt Jany of the Dupo Police Department was on patrol that morning and he could also hear the radio chatter about the UFO. Jany started to look for the object from Interstate 255 as he was traveling northbound, and pulled over. Soon visited by a fellow officer, they joked about the conversation that had been broadcast over CENCOM. The other officer departed and Jany drove up the road only to shortly see a brightly lit object at a distance, to his east. Officer Jany estimated the UFO to be at an altitude somewhere between where small private aircraft and commercial jetliners fly as they approach St. Louis International Airport, (aka Lambert Field). Officer Jany noted that the lights on board the object were brighter than typical aircraft lights, and that at one point he saw a large, red light glowing on the underside, accompanied by white lights which were “sort of flashing” around the object’s perimeter. Because the object was a good distance from him, thus rather small, he used binoculars to view it. At that distance, the red light he reported on the underside must have been very large, and not the smaller, single blinking red light that was observed by Officers Barton and Stevens. When St. Louis International Airport (Lambert Field) called Jany and asked if he could still see the object, he replied in the affirmative. St. Louis Air Traffic Control then informed Jany that there were no visible aircraft on their radar in Jany’s area. Officer Jany communicated his sighting to Milstadt Officer Stevens at approximately 5:03am.
CENTERVILLE/EAST ST. LOUIS, ILLINOIS
Later that morning, at 6:50am, it was dawn and light was just beginning to break. A school teacher, Stephen Winnacott, was on his way to work from Centerville, Illinois and noticed a strange stationary object in the sky. It was huge, triangular, had 2 very bright white lights and many other smaller lights around it. Mr. Winnacott was driving west on Lake Drive overpass (going over Interstate 255) and did not stop his car to view the object, but the image remained with him as he recounted his sighting to the St. Louis Riverfront Times and also to the Discovery Channel for their program “UFO Over Illinois”.
No other reports of the strange, gigantic, silent UFO emerged from that morning of January 5, 2000…until recently.
O'FALLON, ILLINOIS
PHOTO RECONSTRUCTION of Detective Lopinot's view of UFO as it moves silently to the southwest (to the right in photo). Five lights in sky near Shell gasoline station are estimated to be larger than wingspan of a 747 jetliner.
On July 22, 2002, I interviewed Detective Mark Lopinot of the O’Fallon, Illinois police department. I had heard from one of the other officers that a policeman in O’Fallon had also seen the object. Detective Lopinot was in his squad car driving east on Highway 50 going into O’Fallon and as he passed over Interstate 64, he saw an arrangement of bright, occasionally “twinkling”, amber lights (much brighter than street lights) at an approximate altitude of 200-300 feet, and covered an area larger than the wingspan of a C-5 military cargo plane (222 ft.) or a 747 jetliner (211 ft.). The lights consisted of two rows, three evenly spaced lights in the top row and two evenly spaced lights in the bottom row. Detective Lopinot first thought the lights were five helicopters flying in formation, because they covered such a large expanse of night sky; but he soon realized after he rolled down his window, that the lights were totally silent and appeared to be connected, attached to a single object, as all 5 lights moved in perfect unison. Lopinot also noticed that the lights were moving very slowly, so slow as to constitute a stall for a normal prop or jet aircraft. He wondered if the object might be a blimp, but again, no sound could be heard from any kind of engine typically used on lighter than air vehicles. When Lopinot first saw the lights, he observed that they were to the east, beyond the Convenient Food Mart located near the junction of Highway 50 and State Street. As he continued to slowly drive (10-20mph) east on Highway 50, he observed the lights, still in unison, approaching him, moving in a northwesterly direction. As he reached a Shell gasoline station on Highway 50 in O’Fallon, the massive lighting arrangement had now passed over the Convenient Food Mart, approaching Lopinot and maintaining the fixed pattern. The only sense of perspective Detective Lopinot observed on the UFO was when the two lower lights would fade out at times and then fade back in, as if they were being intermittently blocked from view. The two lower lights appeared to be at a greater distance than the top row, both by slightly less intensity, and also by their fading from view, which elicited some sense of depth to the unseen structure behind the lights, which was possibly at an angle.
PHOTO RECONSTRUCTION of Detective Lopinot's view of UFO as it moves silently away from car dealership toward Shiloh. Strange detail of sighting is how 5 lights never change orientation to witness as they move away.
As Detective Lopinot’s police car approached the Jack Schmitt Oldsmobile Dealer (still on Highway 50 eastbound), he saw perhaps the strangest detail of the sighting: the 5 lights, now about 500 feet off the ground and just to the right and south of Highway 50 stopped moving toward him and proceeded to make what Lopinot described as a 90 degree turn or change in direction; that is, the 5 lights, still in a perfectly locked formation, moved to Lopinot’s right, which is Southwest on a map of the area. As Lopinot reached the location at which the lights made the 90 degree turn, Lopinot watched the lights moving away from him over a field and then over the tree tops, where they went out of view. One strange detail observed by Lopinot was that as the lights moved south and away from him, they never changed their relationship to him as an observer. Whatever angle Lopinot viewed the lights from, they remained fixed in two rows, three on top and two on bottom. Detective Lopinot’s sighting took place approximately 2 hours before the end of his shift, which places the sighting between 4:00 and 4:30am on January 5, 2000. Lopinot did not note the exact time, nor did he think the object was anything other than “something from Scott” Air Force Base. Hence, he said nothing of the incident until he heard the news the next day about the sighting by other officers in St. Clair County. Detective Lopinot could not discern any shape of an object. The night sky was very dark; however, the area covered by the fixed lights was unmistakably large: estimated to be larger than the wingspan of a Boeing 747 (221 ft.).
After further conversation with Detective Lopinot and a look at the surrounding area, we discovered that the lights seen by Lopinot headed in the direction of Shiloh, and toward the open field bordering Lebanon Avenue, where Officer Martin saw the object at 4:23am. Roughly 3 miles separate Lopinot’s sighting location from Officer Martin’s sighting location. It is not possible to make an absolute statement that the lights seen by Detective Lopinot were also the UFO seen by Officer Martin, but the times of the two sightings are reasonably close enough to draw a possible connection.
A flight path can be proposed which incorporates Detective Lopinot’s sighting.
Detective Lopinot's map of area and UFO position drawn during July 22, 2002 interview.
The object has shot away from the Lebanon Officer seconds prior to 4:23:06am; actually arrives over O’Fallon, Highway 50 and is observed by Detective Lopinot for the 45 seconds between Lebanon Officer Barton stating the object is near Scott AFB at 4:23:12am* and Officer Martin actually making visual contact with the UFO in Shiloh at 4:23:57am. This cannot be proven, but this new piece of the puzzle prompts speculation. Of course, there is the possibility that the “object” seen by Detective Lopinot was actually a second aircraft of unknown origin, but this leads to an entirely separate set of questions which will be discussed later. There is also the possibility that the object was seen by Detective Lopinot in a time frame outside this very tight temporal window. (* 6 uninterrupted seconds elapse on the actual taped police transmissions between 4:23:06 and Offficer Barton stating the UFO is near Scott AFB, placing the statement that the UFO is near Scott AFB at 4:23:12am).
If this was the same triangular UFO as seen by Officer Barton, and it had just arrived in the O’Fallon area, perhaps what Lopinot observed was an angular view of the object. Based on other reports of flying triangle maneuvers (particularly those reported in the United Kingdom), witnesses have seen these flying triangles flip on the side, or move with their broad, flat end forward. How the two rows of lights on this object always remained facing Detective Lopinot as they moved away, is another mystery.
Artist's rendition of UFO lights as described by Detective Lopinot.
FLORISSANT, MISSOURI
Sighting Location: Witness rendition of unknown craft. Using Photoshop, the witness drew the above representation in red line, superimposed onto reconstruction photo near 5200 block of N. Lindbergh Blvd, southbound in Florissant, Missouri near the Schnuck's Supermarket. Object is reported to have floated across highway near Schnuck's grocery store sign to the left. The smaller rectangle within the large rectangle is the "window" and a childlike, humanoid figure, to scale.
A recent report has been added to this update as of 9/5/04. A rectangular object, similar to that described by Mr. Noll in Highland, has been reported by a man who is employed by a highly respected organization in St. Louis. The man witnessed a large, very low flying and silent object pass over him as he drove southward on Highway 67, (aka Lindbergh Blvd.) in Florissant, Missouri on the morning of January 5, 2000 at approximately 2:00am. The witness reports that a Florissant police officer also saw the object. The report can be see here:
http://dbarkertv.com/florissantmo.htm
THE AIR FORCE SHRUGS…..Again.
Aside from actual witnesses, one of the more interesting interviews that NIDS conducted was at Scott Air Force base, which was fortuitously located near the UFO’s flight path once it arrived near Lebanon (the UFO basically “hung around” the Scott Air Force base area as it was seen between 4:18am and 6:50am). Scott AFB personnel informed the NIDS investigator that Scott personnel knew nothing of the sighting and that they saw no UFO on the morning of January 5, 2000. When the NIDS investigator mentioned during the conversation that he could not recall which police officer first went public, one Air Force officer responded (likely due to an unintentional reflex) “the Millstadt officer”, thus revealing that he did indeed know the details of the sighting. Furthermore, Scott Air Force base’s official response to press inquiries was that Scott has no active radar on the base; that they depend on St. Louis Lambert field for air traffic control and that no one was in the Scott Air Traffic Control tower on the morning in question. Expecting the truth from Air Force personnel regarding UFOs is a tall order. However, allowing the Air Force to blatantly lie about clearly contradictory information is at the least, a necessary exercise in leaving no stone unturned and verifying that the U.S. military is continuing its policy of denying all knowledge of UFO activity or government investigation, which dates back to the 1969 closing of Project Blue Book (the last Air Force public relations entity to openly acknowledge investigation of UFOs).
It was somewhat gratifying when I spoke with officers at police departments near Scott AFB and a consensus surfaced that the statement by Scott personnel regarding their radar being shut down and no longer in use was false. It was observed that the radar at Scott AFB almost never stops rotating and I saw the radar in operation on the day I videotaped it for my program. Also, Scott AFB is the headquarters of the United States Air Force 375th Aeromedical Airlift Wing which hosts the Air Mobility Command (AMC), U.S. Transportation Command and other units. While the base carries quite a responsibility for the United States, I’ve been told by an associate of a serviceman stationed at Scott that the Scott control tower is so dead at 4:00am, that it’s probably true that no one was in the tower to see the UFO (although there was a flight in or out of the base just prior to the sighting). Even if things were “dead”, this does not explain Scott Air Traffic Control’s failure to take note of the UFO, when St. Clair County police dispatch called the tower at the time of the sighting and asked them if they could see the object. Because the UFO was apparently equipped with some sort of anti-radar technology (“stealth”, if man-made), the statement that Scott ATC could not see the UFO on their radar could have been true. But playing dumb about the sighting altogether was intentionally misleading; but this is nothing new. One of the possibly more interesting notes about Scott AFB is that the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has a facility there.
![:-\](https://www.treasurenet.com/smilies/undecided.gif "Undecided :-\")
