Neighbors thought a passing plane was to blame for the purple slime that landed on vehicles near Dallas Love Field on January 9. It turns out dye in the dumpster of a nearby cosmetics firm was the cause.
Several vehicles on Andjon Drive were showered with the pinkish-purple color on the morning of January 8 but no one was outside to see it happen. The next day neighbors spoke with NBC 5 about it.
Melissa Gumm said she scrubbed and scrubbed to get it off her car and other people did, too.
“They're like ‘We don't know what happened.’ They were saying it just came from the sky. They thought it was a plane that dropped something out of it," she said.
Neighbor Mary Beth Kaldahl took her white car through a car wash twice with no success removing the stain. So she paid $250 to have professionals remove it. She thought whoever caused the mess should repay the cost of getting it off.
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"Not only pay for it but, we should know what it was, know what it was that hit us," Kaldahl said that day.
It turns out there is a cosmetics laboratory on Manana Drive, one street over from the purple shower.
The firm’s website shows a woman with purple-colored lipstick very similar to the purple seen on the vehicles.
An official with that company confirmed Tuesday that a box of purple dye recovered by a Dallas Police Detective after the incident is the same material that was in the company’s dumpster on January 9.
The official said a truck from the firm’s trash hauler came to hoist the dumpster up for disposal and the dye flew out.
Neighbor Melissa Gumm was surprised to hear the explanation Tuesday.
“That’s crazy, but yea, I can understand now,” she said. “And the wind blowing, and of course it scatters so, I can understand now. But it’s so strange.”
Dallas Police concluded there was no intent to cause harm so no criminal charges were filed.
“Mystery solved,” Gumm said.
Rain finally washed most of the color off one company’s vehicles but some hard feelings remain about the purple on Andjon Drive.
