A man from Los Angeles claims he witnessed a UFO crash in the desert and saw aliens escape from it.
Furthermore, he says he has a piece of debris from that spacecraft as proof.
When José Padilla was a nine-year-old boy growing up in San Antonio, New Mexico, he and a friend discovered this "avocado-shaped" UFO.
To this day, he remains firmly convinced that everything he witnessed was real.
The encounter happened while the two boys were riding horses through the desert, about thirty kilometers from the site where members of the Manhattan Project, including Robert Oppenheimer, detonated the world's first atomic bomb in 1945.
The encounter occurred in that very same year. At first, Padilla thought the sound of the crash was just another explosion test.
He told CBS Los Angeles News, "I told my friend, 'Must be another nuclear test.' He said, 'Not a bomb, look at the smoke coming from the ground.'"
Looking more closely, the smoke seemed to be coming from a crashed aircraft.
Then, suddenly, three alien beings emerged from the craft and started "swaying and walking in circles."
But Padilla wasn't scared of these beings.
He said, "They crashed on my father's ranch, they needed help."
Over the next 10 days, the military cleaned up the wreckage, while Padilla and his friend watched from nearby hills, despite being warned not to get close.
He said, "We hid behind the cacti."
Those "alien beings" were already gone, which gave Padilla the perfect chance to take a souvenir from inside.
He pulled a small "knob" off the wall, took it home, and hid it in the garage.
In 2015, the Ohio-based chemical testing lab Frontier Analysis analyzed this artifact.
Their report showed it was a material composed of a mix of aluminum, silicon, and copper, as reported by CBS Los Angeles.
This mix of metals is commonly used in engine parts.
The report also noted that the isotopic ratios of these elements were consistent with a terrestrial origin.
But the report also said the possibility that the metal originated from off-world could not be ruled out.
Padilla said, "Nobody knows what it is."
As time passed, Padilla moved from San Antonio to Rowland Heights in the Los Angeles area, quietly raising his own family.
But he always kept that strange artifact from his childhood.
In 2012, the friend who witnessed the UFO crash with him was interviewed by investigative journalist and UFO researcher Paola Harris.
At that time, Harris was investigating claims made by the son of Army pilot William Brophy from during World War II.
Brophy's son told Harris that one of his father's last missions was to fly over the area where Padilla claimed the UFO crashed.
During one flight, he saw two young boys on horseback, as reported by CBS Los Angeles.
Harris believes those two young boys were Padilla and his friend.
Despite scientific analysis suggesting the fragment has terrestrial origins, José Padilla remains unwavering in his belief that he witnessed an extraordinary event as a child.
The artifact, his testimony, and the corroborating account from an Army pilot's son continue to fuel the mystery, leaving a permanent question mark over a remote desert encounter from long ago.