SIGHTING: JOPLIN, MISSOURI (UNITED STATES)

Witness Testimony

"As reported to ASD by phone (witness wishes to remain anonymous), he called this in to me and said that he would file a report in August but he never did so I'm entering the information for the record. If he does file his own report I'll note it on this one. Phone number is my office line. "I work in law enforcement as a State Trooper so don't want my real name used, but felt it was important to let someone know what I saw. I want you to know that I've never seen anything like this before and hope I never do again. I was driving north on Range Line Road (49 hwy) on my routine path at approximately 5:12 a.m. on Sept 2nd when a light caught my eye to the NE of my position low at the tree line. As I drove closer I slowed the vehicle because at first I thought that it must be a helicopter since whatever it was was so low that it couldn't be a plane. I then noticed that there was structure to the object and that it began to move slowly west towards the highway and closer to my vehicle. There were no other cars on the highway at that time. As it got closer and as I drove closer I noticed that the top portion of this teardrop or triangular shaped craft was elevated and that there were windows along the top portion. The windows were rectangular and placed vertically, and there were three that I could see from my position.There was a yellow/white glow coming from inside the windows. I did not see any people inside but did see movement - I assume it was the occupants moving around.The craft appeared to be at least 100'+ wide and 25' or so high. It was a dark dull grey/black metallic craft with lights on the bottom only. I saw no navigation lights. The bottom lights were an amber and a red/orange color of varying sizes but the odd thing was that there was no beam coming from any of the lights - they simply glowed. The size of the lights was from streetlight size to perhaps 24" in diameter. There was a low hum coming from the object which I only noticed on close approach at about 50'. I slowed down to a near stop when the object moved close to the highway and then spun around like a top and reversed direction. As it did so, I heard a loud static noise come from my radio for approximately 15 seconds. I did not call this in to report it because I wasn't sure what I was looking at and did not want to put my job in jeopardy in case it was a real UFO. The object then moved away slowly to the east until I could no longer see it. I realized that my vehicle was stopped on the highway although I remember thinking that I did not intend to stop. I looked at the clock and realized that I had been watching the object for 15 minutes. At that point, I saw a jet moving very fast from east to west, it banked to the north and went back east. It looked like a fighter jet that may have been looking for the object I saw. I could hear it clearly. I did not believe in UFOs before this incident but I know what I saw and it was not something of ours - at least that is known to the public. "