Mystery metal comes through Carpentersville roof

A Carpentersville resident received an unexpected and unwelcome sunroof to his house Friday afternoon. As he returned from running errands to his home on the 200 block of Orleans Street, Dane Willman says he noticed insulation and drywall debris on his bathroom floor. He looked up to see a hole in the ceiling and, upon further investigation, saw that the hole pierced every floor through the roof.

The culprit? A small 4-inch-by-3-inch piece of steel that Willman estimates is about 11/2 inches thick. He said he suspects the piece came off an airplane flying overhead. Willman said he felt fortunate that nobody was around when the piece crashed through his home. However, he was upset that the Federal Aviation Administration had not contacted him and would not investigate further until Monday.

"They should be doing everything they possibly can to find out what's going on here," he said. "I think that's a bad thing."

Great Lakes Region FAA Spokesman Tony Molinaro said the first step will be to determine if the part does indeed come from an airplane. If so, they will then see if the piece has any numbers or markings on it, which will tell them exactly which plane the part came from.

If there are no markings, he said that's when the detective work begins and the FAA will start reviewing radar tracks to see which planes might have been over the area at the time.

The Carpentersville Police Department had the piece as of Friday evening and told ABC 7 that it would be up to the FAA to confirm whether the piece comes from an airplane or not.

"The big 'if' is figuring out first whether it's a piece from an airplane," Molinaro said.

Molinaro said officials would most likely investigate the piece at the police department Monday.

When Willman first saw the debris at about 3:45 p.m., he said he thought animals had gotten into the attic and he was prepared to "face off with a raccoon." But when he felt raindrops falling on his head, he knew that was not the case.

After a quick search for an FAA phone number, he called police who arrived soon thereafter.

Willman has lived in the three-bedroom, two-bathroom home on the southwest side of town for roughly eight years. He stressed that while he did not like the discovery of the hole in his roof, it could have been much worse.

"Destruction is fine. Death and destruction is not," he said. "I'll probably pay a $500 or $1,000 deductible to fix it but at least nobody died. I can sleep easy knowing that."