Name: Parkland Couple Reports Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, Igniting Community Buzz – Parkland Talk
Uploaded: 2023-07-16T10:54:29-04:00
Description: While everyone was looking toward the skies on the 4th of July, a Parkland couple saw something very different from the typical fireworks.

By Agrippina Fadel

While everyone was looking toward the skies on the 4th of July, a Parkland couple saw something very different from the typical fireworks.

Rich and Suzanne Mika, Cypress Point residents, were outside their home around 9.45 p.m. on Independence Day when they looked up toward the Everglades by the end of Loxahatchee Road and saw six or seven orbs that were moving extremely fast and looked like they were on fire.

“They were flying as high as a plane but moving across the sky much faster than an aircraft normally would. We both tried to film them, but they disappeared. We turned to each other and said, “What did we just see?” Rich said.

A minute later, another orb appeared, following the same path as the objects before, and vanished similarly. Rich and Suzanne tried to film it as well.

“It wasn’t a firework or a Chinese lantern, which we both are familiar with. This wasn’t something normal or familiar. The orbs were arranged in a pattern, and the way they were moving was really weird,” Rich said.

Parkland residents for over ten years, Rich is originally from New York City and works at Humana. Suzanne, a law enforcement professional, is from Massachusetts.

“We are very interested in this kind of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP). Sue suggested we put it on Nextdoor and see if anyone else had seen it. We got a few varied comments and over 4,000 views,” Rich said.

The couple says they were trying to find a logical explanation for what they saw and hoped other people had seen the same thing and might have had a theory about its origins.

“We are trying to debunk it and figure out what we saw. We would never come forward with something that was clearly a drone or something else familiar. It is an uncomfortable subject for some people, and I understand that. But we saw what we saw, and it is not something I have ever seen before,” said Suzanne.

Rich said that while living in NYC, he got to experience Macy’s fireworks “a million times” outside his place, and Suzanne’s father was a pyrotechnic.

“We know the difference between fireworks, planes, jets, drones, and lanterns. It wasn’t any of that,” Rich said. “I work for a large insurance company; I think logically in that way, and certainly Sue does as well, so what could it be?”

This was not the first time the couple had seen a peculiar flying object.

“About a year ago, we were walking in our neighborhood. It was a little cloudy, and something made me look up. I saw 7 – 8 lights moving in formation without making any noise up above us at 12 o’clock,” said Suzanne.

“We stopped and started walking towards the lights, and they moved toward 9 o’clock, hovered, and disappeared,” said Rich. The couple shared their experience with friends and family and got different comments, from disbelief to confessions of seeing similar things in the area.

While they don’t know what they saw, the couple said they think it is logical to assume we are not completely alone in the universe.

“You hear about it in the news more and more, and we are starting to see reports from the military and government programs,” Rich said.

Kyle Jeter, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Astronomy Teacher, said that while the information from Rich’s video wasn’t enough to determine anything about the nature of the objects, he didn’t think they were extraterrestrial.

Jeter said people see a wide variety of objects in the skies that can be difficult to identify, and it is especially true in Florida, where there are rocket launches and re-entries every week.

“Plus, we have a vast number of satellites orbiting the Earth now, and we have a prolific amount of air traffic in South Florida. Because of the timing of this event – the evening of the 4th of July, I think it likely that it could’ve been fireworks of some type or, perhaps, people using drones to film the fireworks,” he added.

Rich said he researched potential options of what the orbs could have been and found that Space X did have a few launches in July, but not on Independence Day.

According to the official 2022 Annual Report on UAP, the U.S. government received 366 reports about unidentified objects from 2004 to 2022, with 195 found to be caused by “common activities.”

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Agrippina Fadel

Agrippina Fadel grew up in Siberia and received her master's in journalism from Tyumen State University. Agrippina is also a writer and editor at Draftsy.net. She has been a US resident for over ten years and speaks English and Russian.