Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 3, 1993 TAG: 9304030095
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BY BOB ZELLER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BRISTOL, TENN. LENGTH: Long
FOR NOW, RACE DRIVER'S PLANE CRASH A HORRIBLE MYSTERY
As pilot Mike Colyer lined up stock car driver Dale Earnhardt's plane for a landing on runway 23 at Tri-Cities Airport at 9:30 p.m. Thursday, he heard a horrifying noise on his radio.He knew instantly that 1992 Winston Cup champion Alan Kulwicki's plane had gone down.
In that same terrible minute, while sitting in her hillside trailer outside Blountville, Renee Ford heard something rush by so close overhead that the walls rattled and the lights flickered.
"It made me jump up and scream," Ford said. She looked out the window. "I saw it hit and it just burst into flames."
Nearby, on a frontage road along Interstate 81, two Sullivan County sheriff's deputies saw the lights of Kulwicki's doomed plane as it spiraled into the earth. They turned their patrol car toward the towering flames.
The crash happened so quickly, not one word of trouble came from Kulwicki's pilot, 48-year-old Charlie Campbell of Peachtree City, Ga., Colyer said.
On a green northeastern Tennessee hillside a few hundred yards from a two-lane strip of blacktop called Island Road, Kulwicki, Campbell and Hooters employees Mark Brooks and Dan Duncan were killed in the fiery crash of their twin-engine, turbo-prop Merlin aircraft.
They were minutes away from landing at the Bristol-area airport following the 38-year-old Kulwicki's visit to the Knoxville Hooters restaurant to help promote the chain, which sponsored his NASCAR Winston Cup stock car team. Kulwicki, of Greenfield, Wis., was supposed to practice and qualify Friday at Bristol International Raceway for Sunday's Food City 500 race, which he won last year.
As NASCAR competitors and fans mourned the loss of their reigning champion, a team of Washington-based investigators for the National Transportation Safety Board flew in to start an investigation of the crash, a painstaking examination that may take months.
"The weather, we believe at this point, did not play a part," Sullivan County Sheriff Keith Carr said Friday morning in a news conference at the raceway.
Just before the crash, he said, the plane "had a normal slope, a normal pattern and a normal approach. All of the sudden the deputies noticed from the [plane's] lights that the nose was pointing downward and saw the plane slip into a downward spiral."
Carr said his department was investigating statements from witnesses who "said they had seen something flaming and dropping from the aircraft" about a half-mile before it crashed, but "we have not found anything this morning."
Colyer, Earnhardt's longtime pilot, said, "We could speculate on a 100 different things as to what happened. They were about two miles behind us. And they didn't have any problem that I knew of."
Colyer heard pilot Campbell's last words.
"Six miles out, he called the tower and said, `We're outside the [electronic landing] marker.' "
"And the tower replied, `You're clear to land on two [runway 23].'
"They had no problem," Colyer said. "And then 30 to 45 seconds later at the most, I heard the impact. He had the mike keyed open, and if you want to hear the gory stuff, I heard a grunt and a holler and then I heard the impact.
"The tower controller heard it, too. He immediately tried to call back, but he couldn't get a response.
"When this happened, I was only two miles from the runway. It shocked me so much." But he had his own plane to land.
After touchdown, he said he turned to Earnhardt and said, "Alan's plane went in out there behind us.
"But the worst thing that happened to me was that all those Hooters people were waiting there at the airport," Colyer said. "I couldn't tell them. I just said an airplane went in. I couldn't tell them who. But I knew who it was."
Colyer doubted the crash was caused by engine failure. "Even if they had lost an engine, that airplane has substantial power to fly in," he said.
Along Island Road, a small neighborhood of trailers and small homes was jolted by the crash.
"We were in the house in the back bedroom and I heard this big rumble," said Alden Harr, whose trailer is about 400 yards from the crash site. "I thought somebody had run into the other side of the house. By the time we got to the door, it was just a big ball of fire."
"The impact was quite terrific," the sheriff said. "Some of the instruments were driven into the ground."
"I heard the explosion and jumped up and went to the window," said Rachel Shivley, another Island Road resident. "There was one big explosion and three small ones."
"Them flames were higher than the trees," said another neighbor, David Wayne Cox. "It was still burning when I left. I guess I was there about two and a half hours."
At dawn Friday, cold wind, drizzle and a temperature of 35 degrees chilled the television crews who had set up next to Shivley's house to do live reports for their morning shows.
The wreckage of the plane was clearly visible on the hillside north of the row of homes along the road. A white wing and engine were on the left side of the wreckage. The charred tail was on the right side. In between was a pile of blackened debris.
The bodies were removed during the night and taken to Quillen School of Medicine in Johnson City, where autopsies will be performed by Dr. William McCormack, the Tennessee state medical examiner, Carr said.
Brooks, 26, of Atlanta, was the Hooters sports marketing manager and the son of Hooters Chief Executive Officer Robert Brooks. Duncan, 44, of Taylor, S.C., was Hooters sports marketing director.
It was clear all four men were killed instantly by the crash impact, despite the fire, Carr said.
"At first they couldn't get a fire truck up there," said Cox. "All they could get up there was one four-wheel-drive Toyota. They finally got a fire truck up there and sent two guys up to it with aluminum-looking suits."
"We were the first ones over there," said Ford. "There was no way you could get near it."
Keywords:
AUTO RACING FATALITY