A man walking along the Potomac River this weekend found debris that officials say could be a passenger seat from a fatal collision between an airliner and a military helicopter in January.

Andrew Guevara was out with his dog on the Mount Vernon Trail in Alexandria when he spotted something in the river that looked different from the normal trash along the banks.

“It just looked a little bit odd. … there just seemed to be something noticeable about it, I guess is the best way to say it. There happened to be like a lever that would, it looked like for the tray table, like you would see on a plane. And there happened to be like a leather pouch at the bottom and just the curvature of the top of it. It very much looked like an airplane seat,” Mr. Guevara told WTTG-TV.

He thought that the debris could be from American Airlines Flight 5342, which went down over the Potomac after colliding with an Army Black Hawk helicopter near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Jan. 29, killing all 67 people aboard both aircraft.

“Knowing what happened back in January — the plane crash that happened — I just kept on thinking it was what it was. But I didn’t want it to actually be that. It seemed matching. The red American Airlines color and the blue, the rest of the seat was blue,” Mr. Guevara told WRC-TV.

The Alexandria Police Department retrieved the debris and sent it to the Metropolitan Police Department, which is sending it to the National Transportation Safety Board to confirm its ties to the crash.

“We are taking possession of the item and will evaluate it and store it until it can be transferred to the remainder of the wreckage from the DCA midair accident. If any additional wreckage is located, it will undergo the same process,” the NTSB told ABC News.

• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.