"This Could Have Killed My Mother"

Things could have been tragically different if 80-year old Constance Cotter had been in her bedroom Friday night. That's when several chunks of ice blasted through her roof. Even though Ms. Cotter is deaf, she could feel the impact of the ice as it broke through her ceiling and shattered on her floor. Immediately, she called her 53-year old daughter, Mary Petrillo.

"This could have killed my mother if the bed was on the other side [of the room] and she was up there," Ms. Petrillo told the Boston Globe.

The chunk of ice left a two- by four-foot hole in Ms. Cotter's roof and ceiling. "She was in shock," Ms. Petrillo told the Globe. "She actually heard the boom and she thought the house was falling down."

It wasn't long before federal authorities confirmed what Ms. Petrillo and her mother had suspected all along. The ice had fallen from a low-flying commercial aircraft on approach to Logan International Airport.

FAA spokesman Jim Peters said investigators had determined the ice could have fallen off one of three aircraft in the area at the time Ms. Cotter noticed the sky was falling. But pinpointing the exact aircraft, he said, will probably be impossible.

"It could be unlikely that the crew was even aware that the ice even fell from the skin of the aircraft," he told the Boston newspaper.

As for Ms. Cotter -- she hasn't slept in her bedroom since the sky came tumbling down. Her daughter says it might be some while before she does.

FMI: www.faa.gov