Jose Padilla claims that as a child in 1945, he witnessed a UFO crash in the New Mexico desert near the Trinity nuclear test site. While horseback riding with a friend, Padilla observed three aliens emerging from the crashed, avocado-shaped spacecraft. The military soon arrived to clean up the wreckage, but Padilla managed to secretly take a small artifact—a dial—from the UFO, which he kept hidden for years. Chemical analysis in 2015 identified the artifact as being composed of common terrestrial metals, though an extraterrestrial origin could not be entirely dismissed. Padilla maintains the truth of his story, which was supported by an investigative journalist who linked the event to a mission by a World War II army pilot.