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At the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Detachment in Barrington Passage, Corporal Victor Werbicki had been finishing up some reports and manning the phones. This late in the evening there was no one there to help him. As senior officer in the detachment, he worked long hours and it was expected he would take up the slack, since there was no dispatcher in the evenings. The phone rang at about twenty-five minutes after eleven on that Wednesday night. Werbicki picked it up on the second ring. On the other end was an excited fisherman known to him as Laurie Wickens. Laurie advised the corporal that he was sure that an airplane of some size had crashed into the sound by for on 2 on ee Shag Harbor. Laurie denied this and said they had seen the lights descending toward the sound and that they had heard a whooshing noise and a bang. The corporal, still unconvinced, told Laurie to stay by the pay phone after getting the number. Laurie was left standing in a pool of light cast by a solitary light bulb in the booth of the pay phone at a gas station nearby. He stared with anger at the telephone receiver in his hand, as a dial tone replaced the policeman's voice on the other end. He hung up the receiver. What the hell's going on here? he thought. Laurie walked back to the car parked on the edge of the pavement. "I don't know. They took the phone number but I don't think they believed me. They asked me if I'd been drinking." "Yeah, I told them." Laurie was a little put out. But for the moment he hated to leave this roadside location. Meanwhile another line was ringing on Werbicki's phone. He pushed a button to connect him and identified himself. This time a woman's voice came over the line, Mary Banks from Maggie Garrons Point, an area overlooking the sound and Shag Harbor. She informed Werbicki that she had heard a whistling noise and a bang and saw something out on the sound and thought an airplane might have crashed there. He thanked her and got her phone number and hung up. Again the phone rang and this time another woman informed him that she and a friend were driving south near the shore on Cape Sable Island, which is about thirteen miles northeast of Shag Harbor. She told the corporal they had observed an object, flashing four lights in a sequence, descending into the Shag Harbor area and they thought it might have crashed there. Another call came in from Bear Point just outside of Shag Harbor to the northeast, a man this time, mentioning a whistling noise, a flash of light, and a loud bang, indicating to him that something might have crashed somewhere near the harbor. Werbicki took down the details, thanked the man, and hung up. "Are you sure about this? You haven't been drinking, have you?" A female voice called from the car behind him. "What did they say, Laurie? Are they coming?" "What!" The girl was surprised. "Did you tell them something crashed into the bay?" Now that they'd hung up on him, he didn't know what he should do next.