Three stick to U.F.O. claims

Press, 5 December 1979, Page 9

Three stick to U.F.O. claims

NZPA-Reuter Cergy-Poutoise, France The authorities in a small town north west of Paris are trying to decide whether to charge Frank Fontaine and his friends with criminal mischief or launch a search for a mysterious, glowing, unidentified flying object. •‘This is just too fantastic.” said Mr Roger Courcous. chief of police in Cergy-Poutoise, after listening to the testimony of Mr Fontaine, aged 19, and his two comrades, Jean-Pierre Prevot and Salomon Ndiaye, both aged 25. Mr Fontaine, who had been the object of a police search since November 26. reappeared

yesterday in the exact spot where he disappeared a week ago. He was wearing the same clothes and had exactly the same amount of money as the day he disappeared. According to the police, the three have con. sistently repeated this same story under long questioning: At 4 a.m. on November 26, the three young men had just finished loading a station waggon with clothes they were going to sell at an open market when they saw a brilliant light about the size of a tennis ball to the right of the car. The ball became larger and larger and came to a rest on the bonnet of the car, causing their eyes to

“burn.” From that moment, until his reappearance, Mr Fontaine remembers nothing. Mr Prevot and Mr Ndiaye left Mr Fontaine to watch the car as they ran home to get a camera. When they returned, their friend was gone, the car was there with the door open, and a halo of light surrounded the car. The halo suddenly disappeared. Just as mysteriously as he vanished, Mr Fontaine reappeared in exactly the same spot. When he saw the car was gone, he thought it had been stolen, and he rushed to the house of Mr Ndiaye. Seeing his friend in his pyjamas, he said: “What are you doing in your pyjamas? Five min-

utes ago you were ready to leave for Gisors.” The police checked the young man and the spot where he disappeared with a geiger counter, but found no trace of radio-activity. Nor was there any trace of mud on Mr Fontaine’s clothes or shoes. According to Mr Courcous, Mr Fontaine has not varied his story one bit, and his tale conforms exactly with the testimony of his two friends. In spite of that, however, the police remain sceptical, and have called in experts from the Group for the Study of Non-identified Aerospatial Phenomena, a section of the French National Space Agency.