Multiple witnesses are a positive thing for any UFO investigation, especially when they are scattered and you have accounts from different perspectives.

One of the toughest parts of the UFO investigation business is often something as simple as having a witness come forward at all. We all realize that many good cases go unaccounted for because the witness does not want to tarnish their reputation or career with being a UFO witness.

A new witness has surfaced this month that may relate to a rather good case that occurred in southern Illinois in early January 2000 – an account with multiple witnesses that included police officers in several towns that were chasing the object. The story was told on Bill Birnes’ network show, “UFO Hunters”.

Illinois State Director Sam Maranto recalls the case well and says the story played out the evening of January 4 and into the wee hours of January 5, 2000.

The new witness recently read a story of mine about a Missouri case and he decided to come forward with his account of what happened in early January 2000. In a telephone interview, he says he heard the news about what happened in southern Illinois, assumed it was the same craft, but he did not report it.

In part, the witness stated, “I lived in a little town south of St. Louis, MO, back in 2000. I was the assistant fire chief for our district. I was coming home from a fire call at a neighboring township about 3 a.m. I picked up all the radio traffic from the local law enforcement channel.”

The radio traffic was rather unusual. He said he made the decision to investigate and met up with local police officers.

“Seems they were chasing this craft that had come across the Mississippi River and was heading right to the police officers and myself.”

They were able to locate and observe the object.

“We picked up the craft off of Highway 50 & I-44 traveling southeast  about 25-30 mph, about 500 feet above our cars.”

The group of professionals decided to give chase.

“We kept up with it for about an hour before it took off across country and disappeared.”

They were not able to capture the object on camera.

“We did not have a camera with any of us and the dash cameras on the two police cars would not pan up to film this craft.”

The witness decided to build a model of what he saw that night and an image of that is included with this story. The information from this witness was passed on to both Illinois and Missouri MUFON and both states are currently conducting an investigation.

Maranto pointed out that this case “came on the heals of a mass sighting in Rockford, IL, just days earlier.” He said that if the new witnesses’ date and time matches, it could very well be the same object seen by multiple police officers in Illinois. The object could then have traveled southwest and into the area where these witnesses were located that same night.