20-Pound Chunk of Ice Makes Crash Landing in Living Room

Claudette Walker’s neighbor was returning home just after 1:30 Wednesday morning when she heard a loud whistling sound, looked to the sky over Pomona and saw the funny glow. She kept on going home.

“She didn’t say anything because she didn’t want anybody to think she was crazy,” Walker said.

Moments later, a huge chunk of ice, estimated at 10 to 20 pounds, tore through the roof of Walker’s Kellogg Park Drive home, ripping a wide gash in the living room ceiling and hurtling shards of ice everywhere. Asleep in their bedroom, Walker and her husband, Willie, were awakened by the “large boom” made by the plummeting ice.

“It was like something had crashed,” a shaken Walker said later. “I was sure it was my sliding door and that somebody was coming through. I thought it was the (Valley) Intruder, the killer.”

It wasn’t. Authorities theorize the block of ice fell from a plane en route to Los Angeles International Airport. A spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration said it is possible that the ice could have come loose from the exterior of a plane.

“We can assume it didn’t come from a bird,” said Pomona Fire Capt. Rob Hecht.

Whatever its source, the scene, more akin to Nome, Alaska, than Pomona, Calif., came as a shock to Willie Walker, who crept into the living room to investigate.

“He walked in and just saw ice,” his wife said. “We just thank the Lord nobody was hurt and that it didn’t happen in the bedrooms or something. Everyone was sleeping.”

The shattered ice, enough to fill a plastic bag 10 by 11 inches, had caved in the ceiling and scratched its way across living room furniture and decorative crystal glassware. The Walkers, quite literally, could look up through the ceiling to see stars.

“Why it was my house I just can’t imagine,” Claudette Walker said. “It’s all very weird. Even the firemen said so.”

Meanwhile, the Walkers are keeping their ice packaged in their home freezer “for investigation purposes.”

“I did contact my insurance company,” Walker said.