An Ontario man thought vandals had smashed his mother's car windshield with rocks but it turned out the rocks came from a meteorite, officials in Canada said.

The meteorite's fireball lit up the sky over Ontario Sept. 25 with a light 100 times brighter than the moon.

Researchers at the University of Western Ontario tracked the remains of the fireball to Grimsby, Ontario, where Tony Garchinski discovered the windshield of his mother's car shattered and five small black rocks sitting in the driveway, Canwest News Service reported Saturday.

Garchinski, 20, eventually saw a news report on the meteorite and called the researchers.

The meteorite samples are being studied at the university before being returned to Garchinski. The samples are estimated to be nearly 4.5 billion years old and from the asteroid belt located between Jupiter and Mars, the report said.