An animated retiree has gone viral for his vivid depiction of the moment a missing F-35 stealth jet crashed near his home in rural South Carolina like a “meteorite” from “outer space.”
Wearing a straw hat in his Williamsburg County front yard, Randolph White, 72, told a local NBC affiliate that he was “in the shower shaving” Sunday when a piercing sound filled the “nice and quiet and peaceful” area.
“And I heard screams,” he recalled. “Between screams and whistles.”
White then imitated the noise, producing a long, rich scream that some online have likened to James Brown’s prime.
“I said, ‘What in the world?'” White remembers thinking. “And I heard an explosion! Then my whole house shook.”
The longtime local – who retired from a nearby paper mill about a decade ago – said he had no idea the noise was coming from a $90 million F-35 jet that went missing after its pilot ejected in a “still unexplained” accident.
“I said well, did the meteorite come from outer space or something?” White recalled, his voice rising in surprise at it all.
South Carolina retiree Randolph White went viral for his impressions of a missing F-35 jet that crashed near his home. WCBD NEWS 2 /Youtube
The F-35 stealth jet disappeared after the pilot ejected due to an “accident”. Getty Images
“And I said, if it’s an airplane, it should be reported because it’s flying too low,” he said. “I know it’s low because my house is pretty solid, and it shakes.”
A day passed before he heard a helicopter buzzing overhead Monday afternoon, and White didn’t immediately make the connection to the wild sounds he heard so clearly.
Instead, he thinks police activity is because “someone has to rob a bank” or “kill some people or whatever.”
“So, I walked over there, and they told me it was about the plane,” he said.
Randolph said he was at home when he heard a sound similar to “groans and whistles.” WCBD NEWS 2 /Youtube
White said he was thankful no one was injured – and noted that there was a small church on the side of the road that the plane could have easily hit.
“Anything man-made can be dysfunctional,” he said. “You try to give them the benefit of the doubt. But it needs to be investigated and people need to know what really happened. Understandably, what happened should not be a secret. Because, you know, it could be a big disaster.”
White’s animated recreation clip immediately went viral online, with Barstool Sports called it “A FULL-TIME recreation of an F-35 crash.”
Debris from the jet was finally found in Williamsburg County.WCBD NEWS 2 /Youtube
“Mr. Randolph White just reinvented ‘Reeeeeee’, and it’s EVERYTHING,” tweeted Bree Dail of the Daily Wire, while another user X wrote: “A star and a meme is born!”
Officials had not given an official cause for the crash as of Wednesday.
The pilot, who has not been identified, was in a residential area in North Charleston on Sunday afternoon and was taken to a local hospital for treatment.
He is understood to have left the jet on autopilot when he broke free — sparking a desperate and embarrassing manhunt that included soldiers appealing to local residents to help find the plane.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
