For
the past 10 days, 11-year-old David Knutsen of Surrey has kept the biggest
secret of his life locked inside his Kodak Instamatic camera.
On October 15, the freckle-faced Grade 6 student snapped a picture of what
he is convinced was an Unidentified Flying Object, a round silver coloured
craft that made a soft buzzing sound outside his apartment.
David was talking to a friend in an apartment complex when he said he
noticed two RCMP officers standing in the building's parking lot, pointing
in the sky towards the east.
'It just went round and round in a circle, up and down, and then took off
super fast in the sky,' David said in an interview today.
The UFO shot he took was the first picture on a 20-picture roll and
David's father, a construction worker, wouldn't let him develop it until
the other 19 pictures were taken.
David finished the roll last weekend and received his negatives Friday.
'I wasn't that excited honestly,' said his father. 'You know how kids are.
I really didn't believe it, but then I saw the picture and it was so
good.'
The colour snapshot, taken at 4:00 PM after David returned home from Old
Yale Rd. elementary school, depicts a circular, almost-black object with a
sharp but narrow blue glow around its exterior. There were no other
distinguishable markings on the craft which he estimated was about 400
feet away at its closest point.
The whole episode lasted only three seconds, according to David. RCMP Sgt.
Arnold McPherson said today he didn't know the names of the officers David
claimed to have seen watching the object.
'No UFO reports were filed by anyone in the police station and no one had
made any mention of sightings', he said.
An air traffic control spokesman at Vancouver airport said his log book
showed no unaccounted-for objects on ATC radar screens on October 15.
The Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Victoria also said it had no reports of
unidentified flying objects that day.
Knutsen described his son as a boy with 'an interest in UFOs.'
David said he had been reading library material on the mysterious craft
but swears the October 15 sighting from his kitchen window was authentic.
'It wasn't no round airplane, I know that,' he said.
A blazing white unidentified Flying Object which was described as roaring
like a jet aircraft was reported by an RCMP officer in Turner Valley,
Alta., two days before David claims his UFO appeared in Surrey . . .
David was unclear about the UFO's size. He said it was roughly 50 feet in
diameter but that its 'super speed' prevented him from being sure. The
only light he saw was the sun gleaming off the craft, he said.
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