2000-07-14 - Tooele, UT - Unknown

I am reporting this information as secondhand only, but it sounded intriguing and was corroborated by two additional parties so I thought you might be interested. A married couple in their 50's who are neighbors of mine were sitting on their front porch on Friday 7/14 and reported a strange phenomenon at a distance of about two city blocks, looking west toward the Tooele Army Depot. Please keep in mind that these people are not very articulate and described what they saw in very simple terms (their description in quotes). A "beam of light", possibly six to eight ft. in width, suddenly descended to the ground from an unknown source. They indicated no source but described the light as similar to that of a "police helicopter shining its spotlight". There was no sound. The light stayed trained on the same spot for perhaps less than a minute and then seemed to "disintegrate" in an upward direction during which there were "sparkles" (similar to something from "Star Trek"), followed by "smoke". The phenonenon then disappeared. The couple shared their experience with several people and two other parties: a teenage girl, her parents and brother approximately a half mile from this location and another married couple doing some late night fishing near Utah Lake, about an hour and a half south of Tooele, reported startlingly similar phenomenon. The neighbors also reported hearing a similar experience from a woman in Modesto CA on talk radio a few days later. This was the day/night of the government's unsuccessful test of the space-based defense system, which I believe took place in California. There may or most likely may not be a correlation. The area in question borders a new housing subdivision, is dark except for a few street lights newly installed in the subdivision, and is bordered to the west by the Tooele Army Depot where chemical/biological munitions are stored in dozens of concrete bunkers. This wide valley is not illuminated and the mountain range in the distance is approximately 20 miles away.