SPRING, Texas – A foot-long piece of heavy, rusty metal fell from the sky into a backyard pool in Spring, near the Hooks airport, one family said.
“We were worried about the kids, you know?” said James Smith, whose niece and nephew were about to go swimming when he said it happened.
The family pays a professional to clean the pool regularly, Smith said, and a family member also made sure the pool was spotless for the kids Saturday afternoon.
“He cleaned, especially on this spot!” James said, referring to his brother-in-law, and pointing to where the mystery metal showed up.
After cleaning the pool, James’ brother-in-law went inside to get the kids, he said. When they came outside minutes later, there it was in the deep end.
“We had the big piece in the pool and we had … small[er] piece[s] right over here,” Smith said, pointing to the grass a couple of feet from the water.
The family determined that nobody could have thrown the metal. The fence in the back is extra tall, far from the pool, and nobody lives nearby. The neighbors on each side are far away.
But "we see planes all the time!" Smith said. “They fly overhead.”
“As Sherlock Holmes says it, when you’ve eliminated all that’s possible, whatever’s left must be the truth,” Smith said.
The David Wayne Hooks Memorial Airport, only a few miles away from the Smith home, did not respond to a request for comment.
An experienced airport worker who saw the mystery metal told KPRC it’s “impossible to tell” whether the rusty pieces came from an aircraft.
Here's the actual Holmes quote, from author Arthur Conan Doyle: "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."