March 25 (UPI) — Meteorite hunters have descended on an Ohio county where a massive fireball last week left fragments behind — including one possible fragment in a resident’s driveway.
The car-sized asteroid broke up over Northeast Ohio on March 17, and in recent days meteorite hunters have descended on Medina County in the hopes of recovering fragments of rocks from space.
December Harris, a local resident who has been searching for pieces of the meteorite, said a walnut-sized piece may have hit earth surprisingly close to home.
“My cousin came out to get her car to go to work and she found this meteor piece, we believe, right at her car,” Harris told WJW-TV.
Case Western Reserve University professor and researcher Ralph Harvey said some pieces that survived reentry might be as large as grapefruits.
Medina 6th grader Evan Waite found a 3-gram meteorite fragment behind Sharon Elementary school. His mother had previously found two smaller pieces.
“It was just a beautiful unexpected moment,” mother Ashley Waite said of the moment Evan found his fragment.
Harvey offered some tips for hunters searching for their own fragments.
“If it looks burned up a little on the outside and it’s got a different kind of texture or color on the inside and it’s in the wrong place, that’s where you start going, ‘hmm,'” he said.
Local authorities are urging meteorite hunters to be respectful of private property. The Medina County Sheriff’s Office said there have been multiple trespassing complaints involving hunters, but no arrests have been made.