China says it reserves right to respond to downing of surveillance balloon

A South Carolina woman had a front row seat to the military missile strike on a suspected Chinese spy balloon, describing a “loud boom” that rattled her home.

“It literally just flew right over our development, our house,” the witness, Liane Munier of Myrtle Beach, told ABC News. “As soon as I walked outside, I literally looked straight up in the sky and it was right above my head.”

Munier said it appeared the balloon traveled just offshore when several military fighter jets swooped in and shot it down.

“I was outside, I was watching it. You saw all the fighter jets flying around it and circling it, you saw all the air streams. I think there were about five of them. I went back inside for a second and all of a sudden the whole house just shook that it was like a loud boom,” said Munier, who recorded video of the midair episode on her cell phone.

Munier said she initially thought a TV fell off the wall in her daughter’s upstairs bedroom, but when she went back outside, she saw smoke in the sky and “you saw the whole thing deflated.”

“I knew they were planning on shooting it down, but I didn’t think it would be this soon and this close to land,” Munier said.

She said it was a relief to her and many of her neighbors to see the balloon shot out of the sky.

“It was nerve-wracking seeing it fly over,” Munier said. “I’m sure the whole country felt like that, not knowing what it was.”