Many of you voiced your opinion about the alleged UFO footage that was captured by a news crew in St. Paul, Minnesota. I thought it was an interesting footage that showed anomalous lights in the Minnesota sky. Some of you believed it to be real UFO activity. Some thought right away that this was a hoax. It turns out that it was indeed a hoax. Lights on a kite. GhostTheory’s, Gary, had said that the lights resembled a string of lights on a balloon.

Ernest Sawka Jr., 34, is the man behind the hoax. Ernest had bought strings of L.E.D. lights and attached them to kites and was flying them in the middle of the night. Why? For attention I guess.

…They found Sawka flying a kite, with small lights attached to the string. He told police he’d “been setting these kites rigged with lights throughout St. Paul during the year,” the report said.

The St. Paul man said he didn’t set out to make people believe a UFO was above their heads but called himself a “kind of goofy” person trying to have a good time.

“I’m kind of flattered,” Sawka said in an interview. “It’s hard to get people to bat an eye nowadays. I’m just trying to get people to think and look around and enjoy what is right now.”

Full source:

When videos of flashing lights in the St. Paul sky this month drew Internet and TV news speculation about UFOs, the man behind them loved the attention.

Ernest Sawka Jr., 34, said he considered coming forward, but the truth didn’t come out until early Friday. The Unidentified Flying Object is now an Identified Flying Object.

About 12:50 a.m., St. Paul officers were “investigating an unidentified flying object in the sky” near Central Avenue and Victoria Street, a police incident report said. While on patrol, they saw lights in the sky and went behind Maxfield Magnet School, said officer John Keating, a police spokesman.

They found Sawka flying a kite, with small lights attached to the string. He told police he’d “been setting these kites rigged with lights throughout St. Paul during the year,” the report said.

The St. Paul man said he didn’t set out to make people believe a UFO was above their heads but called himself a “kind of goofy” person trying to have a good time.

“I’m kind of flattered,” Sawka said in an interview. “It’s hard to get people to bat an eye nowadays. I’m just trying to get people to think and look around and enjoy what is right now.”

Sawka spoke Friday from the Ramsey County Jail, where he was booked on an outstanding warrant unrelated to the kite flying.

Flying a kite with lights on it is usually not a crime, “but if it creates an unsafe condition, it could be considered a public nuisance,” covered by state law, Keating said.

However, Keating said he doesn’t expect Sawka will be charged for kite flying.
Sawka, whose nickname is “Junior,” said he’s been sending lighted kites into the sky around St. Paul for about two years. He’ll put a “kite up a couple hundred feet and then start tying lights to the string,” he said. They’re “little LED bullet lights,” Sawka said.

Sawka said he got the idea while at a Michaels craft store. He and his 7-year-old daughter, Jaiden, would fly kites but kept running out of string. At the store, he found 1,500-foot packages of string and spotted the little lights there, too.

Jaiden loved the lights on the kite’s string, and Sawka’s son Rollie, who will be 2 this month, also gets a kick out of it, Sawka said.

Then, videos of the lights showed up Aug. 10 on YouTube and KSTP-TV.

On that day, at 12:17 a.m., a woman had called the Ramsey County Emergency Communications Center and reported she saw a UFO above Edgerton Street and Rose Avenue. Police checked it out, but nothing came of it.

“That was for sure my kite,” Sawka said Friday. “I figured out how to put my lights in formation. I just think it’s funny. I think it’s cool. I’m not trying to trip anyone out.”

Lorna Hunter, Minnesota director of the Mutual UFO Network, said her group knew from the start that the lights were not a UFO. After Hunter received reports about the videos, she asked MUFON’s national photo analyst to check them out the night of Aug. 10.
“He could tell on the spot that it was a hot air balloon or kite,” Hunter said Friday.

How did he know? “The lights were evenly spaced, they didn’t move, they didn’t separate from each other, and you can see the stars behind it, so you could tell it wasn’t a solid object,” Hunter said.

“If it’s a hoax, we’ll say it’s a hoax,” Hunter said. “We’re not out to call every light in the sky a UFO.”

Susie Lange, Sawka’s girlfriend and Rollie’s mother, said she never thought the lights would get so much attention.

“We were kind of surprised because he’s been doing this for so long and it hadn’t gotten attention prior to this,” she said.

The case that landed Sawka, who has a long criminal history, in jail Friday was a 2008 theft of a surveillance camera from a St. Paul apartment complex. He pleaded guilty to gross misdemeanor theft in March and was supposed to turn himself in to serve 18 days at the Ramsey County workhouse. But he didn’t, and a warrant was issued, according to court records and Sawka’s account.

I guess Ernest was so dedicated to “getting people to think” that he didn’t think about the warrant he had out for his arrest when trying to get attention that night. In 2008, he was caught on a surveillance camera robbing a unit from a St. Paul apartment complex. Upon pleading guilty, he was given 18 days to turn himself in to county jail but decided to ignore that sentencing instantly getting a warrant issued for his arrest. Ernest then decides to draw attention to himself by flying large kites with L.E.D. lights all throughout St. Paul. Real smart Ernest…
I guess now I know why they made all those horrible “Ernest goes to…” movies.