On April 24, 1964, Socorro, New Mexico police officer Lonnie Zamora began chasing a teenager who was speeding through town. Lonnie chased the teen into the desert when he saw a strange object in the desert. The white object appeared, at first, to be an overturned car. However, Lonnie looked closer and realized that it was an unknown object and that people appeared to be standing around it. Lonnie attempted to radio back to headquarters, but could not speak through all of the static. Then, a door on the side of the craft apparently closed, and the small people around the craft were apparently inside. Lonnie claimed that flames shot from the bottom of the craft, it floated up about twenty feet, and then flew away to the west.
When Sam Chavez, a friend and fellow police officer arrived, he realized that Lonnie was excited and concerned. Sam noticed that there were several deep landing-type marks on the ground. Sam believed him, knowing that Lonnie was credible and did not make stories up. US Army officials from the nearby White Sands missile range sent Captain Richard Holder to investigate the sighting. Holder also noticed the strange marks in the ground and also noticed a bush burned to a crisp on only one side. Holder found no evidence that Lonnie’s UFO sighting was a hoax, and felt it was genuine. State trooper Ted Jordan was taking pictures of the scene when Air Force officials confiscated his camera. Another witness, still unidentified, pulled into a nearby gas station later that day. He told a gas station employee that he and his family had seen a UFO similar to the one that Lonnie described. The object apparently flew over their car, travelling at least 150 miles per hour.
The case was investigated by the Air Force, who believed that a military aircraft is what Lonnie actually saw. UFO expert and researcher Jerome Clark does not believe the Air Force’s explanation and believes that what Lonnie saw was a UFO. The Air Force officials brought Dr. J. Allen Hynek, a respected astronomer and consultant on project Bluebook. Hynek found that the physical evidence was convincing, along with the witness, Lonnie Zamora, himself. Lonnie believes what he had seen was not from this Earth, and the UFO sighting has never been explained.
