On Wednesday, a Humvee that was attached to a parachute landed in a North Carolina neighborhood after it fell early from a Boeing C-17 transport plane.
The transport plane departed from Fort Bragg and after encountering some complications, dropped its load early in a wooded Harnett County neighborhood, WRAL reported.
The intended drop off point for the Humvee was the Sicily Drop Zone about a mile away, U.S. military officials said.
Fort Bragg spokesman Tom McCollum said, “The back of the plane is already open. Everything is ready to go, but [the load] hasn’t been released. Something happened. It’s under investigation of what actually took place, but the platform went out early.”
Ironically, the purpose of the flight was to test a new deployment platform and was conducted by the Airborne & Special Operations Test Directorate.
A U.S. military spokesperson said, “The C-17 took off from Pope Army Airfield, Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on a routine air drop test training mission and inadvertently dropped a US Army Humvee vehicle prematurely over Cameron, North Carolina, approximately five miles from the Fort Bragg drop zone.”
Lt. Col. Mike Burns said, “The key thing here is that there were no injuries or no significant property damage. The only damage was to several trees.”
He added the incident is under review.
HUMMER DROPS FROM THE SKY: Military plane accidentally drops Humvee over Harnett County neighborhood. The C-17 was on heavy-drop training mission Wednesday afternoon when a Humvee it was carrying was released. #cbs17 https://t.co/7dnQqEQUhG
— CBS 17 Investigators (@CBSInvestigate) October 24, 2018
Nearby neighbors were shocked. Shatwana Ross said, “This is the place where our kids play and run. Luckily, they were in school when this happened because that’s normally where they’re at.”
Another neighbor, Orie Blue said, “I heard boom! And I just took off running and didn’t look back.”
In May, a 173rd Airborne Brigade soldier, Sgt. John Skipper, was found guilty after he sabotaged a military training exercise in 2016, allowing three Humvees to fall from a plane, Stars and Stripes reported.
The incident was captured on video and went viral but was shameful to the Army.
The jury found Skipper guilty of purposely cutting the parachute straps on three Humvees, allowing them to eject from the plane and fall.
