Lights over the Yuma Palms
This Friday looked to be ending like any other Friday, having just wrapped up a series of live remotes at Sam’s Club at the Yuma Palms I was on my way back to the station. As a photojournalist for News 11, you always have to be ready for anything, so when I looked at the western sky, I did what came naturally. As I aimed to the sky and began recording I noticed a crowd gathering.
The patrons were gathering with phones in hand getting pictures and video of the light stretching across the horizon. While I called our station to have our tower camera faced south in the general direction of the unknown object, I could hear people speculating as to what the object was. The first was an older gentleman who approached me and with a soft and calm voice said to me, “North Korea” and then walked away.
Another spectator was a mother and her three children; as the children asked their mother what the object was, she didn’t hesitate to tell her children that some child must have asked Santa for an alien. Others around the parking lot made similar observations from a UFO, a missile and even the jolly old fellow himself.
Moments later the cause of the bright light and trail of smoke was identified as a rocket carrying a communications satellite. For a short time, the light in the sky had many people’s imaginations working overtime. Many of those people shared their videos and pictures on our website.
