Mystery object falls from sky in NJ, causes damage to auto shop

MAGNOLIA, N.J. (WPVI) -- In the small town of Magnolia, New Jersey, there's a lot of talk about a giant boom heard early Wednesday morning.

Around 2:30 a.m. Wednesday, residents were woken up by the sound.

When Sebastian Leonardo arrived at his auto body shop on Atlantic Avenue later that morning, he noticed a giant hole in the ceiling.

When employees climbed up to look at the damage to the roof and ceiling, they saw where the unidentified object had made impact.

"A sizable dent in a thick steel gage box. That's when I went to all of my cameras and found the video and realized what had actually happened -- a flash outside and the impact in here," said Sebastian Leonardo.

Surveillance footage from cameras in and outside of S & L Automotive shows the moment something collided with the building.

"You eventually see a giant fireball come through the ceiling, and everything comes flying down. The roof with it," said Leonardo.

Several doorbell cameras at homes around town captured video of the incident.

"There's a bright flash, there's a boom, there's a hole. That's three out of four things. If we had one more thing, like an item that we could identify as being extra-terrestrial, then we might say it's something from space," said Astronomer Derrick Pitts of The Franklin Institute.

Magnolia resident Denise Korejko said it was enough to wake her.

Neighbors were on edge.

"It was really, really loud. The sky, the big bright light, and the big bang, it was big," said Korejko.

Back at S & L, they're hard at work Friday, but plan to spend the weekend combing through this debris and sharing their big bang theory.

"This is really a once-in-a-lifetime thing, I imagine," said Leonardo.