driving east on bridge, spot multicolored object with sparkling trail, went dark after viewing, glided silently across night sky

ive been holding on to this experience for over 33 years.
My mother and I were driving across the i-35 bridge overpass in olathe ks, in 1988, around 9:15pm.,sept.
My mother looked to the south nightsky and said "wow..a falling star, look'.
About an estimated 100-120 yards away, up in sky, was what appeared to be a comet falling
in a slow,gliding descent, with multicolored , sparkling trail behind it.
Right after I said "look at the sparkling colors in the trail" the object went completely dark.
We could make out a vauge black cresent shape against the night sky gliding slowly eastbound.
My mother said "lets see if we can follow its path, to see what it is"
my mother turned onto clairborne southbound, until we were on 151st street, then turned onto
151st eastbound (past 151st there is nothing but country roads and empty land)
THIS NEXT PART IS WHY IVE BEEN AFRAID TO SHARE THE EXPERIENCE UNTIL NOW.
Upom approaching the turning lane to head off 151st, there was a yellow hatchback car, sitting
in our turning lane, with its lights off.
My mom said "why is this car sitting, in the turning lane?"
she pulled up behind the car and stopped, upon doing so, an asian man got out of the drivers side was wearing
jeans, flannel shirt, with one of those puffy vests over it, that were popular in the 80s.
And he walked over to my moms driver side and asked "what are you guys doing?"
my mom told him what we saw and that we were trying to follow it.
The guy said "its probably nothing" and then proceeded to get back in his car.
My mother said nothing and proceeded to turn northbound onto blackbob rd away from 151st.
Est 15 seconds passed until we spoke and I said "why didn’t you ask him WTH he was doing sitting
in the turning lane?" my mom said "I don’t know!" she said "when he was talking to us, did you
have a dream like feeling?" I said "yes!" we were both so spooked, we never told anybody and
my mom went to her grave never discussing it again.
The olathe daily news, the next morning, had a picture of this sparkling object in the paper calling it
a comet. Apparently someone else saw it and snapped a photo.
That’s the experience and I feel better now finally telling someone.
If you need any further info, you can call me at (deleted)
regards.