This heavy metal rod that crashed into the back end of a car in the Casco Bay Lines parking lot Wednesday night was determined to have come from a tugboat on the other side of the pier. Photo courtesy of Cam Malette

The 35-pound piece of metal that crushed the rear window and hatch of a car in the Casco Bay Lines parking lot didn’t fall from an airplane — it was launched from a nearby tugboat.

Cam Malette, a 21-year-old deckhand for Casco Bay Lines, was notified by a co-worker around 10 p.m. Wednesday that the back window of his Volkswagen Jetta had been shattered and the rear door had been crumpled. He arrived in the nearly empty parking lot to find that a heavy metal rod about the length and thickness of his forearm had smashed into the rear hatch.

Malette then called his cousin, a Portland police officer, and they theorized the rod could only do that much damage if it had fallen from the sky.

They weren’t too far off. It fell from the sky but not from an airplane.

The piece of metal broke off a tugboat that was docked on the other side of the Maine State Pier, flew over the building, and landed on Malette’s car, according to Malette and a spokesperson for the Federal Aviation Administration.

A piece of metal hit a car in the Casco Bay Lines lot Wednesday night. Photo courtesy of Cam Malette

The FAA determined it was part of a tie-down cleat on the boat. Malette said his boss called him while he was working this morning and told him one of the vessels at Portland Tugboat was missing a piece from its chocks, which matched the weathered, yellow-painted rod he found on his car.

Malette theorized that the cleat became airborne after it snapped off while under pressure from a line on the tug.

“It does seem more likely that would’ve been the culprit,” Malette said.