Indian man killed by falling meteorite; three others injured

A meteorite is believed to be responsible for the death of a 40-year-old man and injuries to three other people after falling near a cafeteria on the campus of Bharathidasan Engineering College in India, CNN.com and the Wall Street Journal are reporting.

The alleged incident took place at approximately 12:30 pm local time at the campus, which is located in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu. While the exact nature of the object has not yet been confirmed, it left at least a two-foot crater, and authorities believe it was a meteorite.

If so, this would be the first death ever to be attributed to a falling space rock, according to the Washington Post. The victim, who has been identified as V. Kamaraj, worked as a bus driver at the school and was standing close to the affected area at the time of impact. He passed away en route to a hospital, and three others, including a student and two gardeners, were injured.

Eyewitnesses said that the incident generated a loud noise, similar to an explosion, that could be heard up to two miles away and smashed the windows of classrooms and nearby parked vehicles. No evidence of explosives were found at the scene, but investigators reported finding tiny pieces of diamond-like rock that were “blue-ish black” in color.

Analysis will determine if the object is actually a meteorite

P.K. Senthil Kumari, the police chief in Tamil Nadu’s Vellore district, told CNN that it had not yet been confirmed that the impact was caused by a meteorite and not some other kind of debris such as a piece of falling space junk. The recovered rocks have been sent to the Indian Institute of Astrophysics for further analysis.

Sujan Sengupta, an associate professor at the Institute, told the Wall Street Journal that there is “extremely little possibility of a small meteorite falling to the ground” and hitting and killing a person. NASA noted that there was no record “in modern times of any person being killed by a meteorite,” and that there was a “small” risk of such an incident occurring.

A senior official at the facility who did not wish to be identified told AFP, “Our team has taken samples from the site and the object. It will take a couple of days to determine its origin… As of now we cannot confirm if it is a meteor or not.”

According to the Washington Post, the last human fatality caused by a meteorite came in 1825, also in India. However, there have been several close calls since then, including a 1954 incident in which an Alabama woman was injured after a meteorite tore through the roof of her home and a 2013 explosion that injured more than 1,000 people in Russia’s Ural Mountains.

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