THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, July 12, 1994 TAG: 9407120334
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY KAREN JOLLY DAVIS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: KIPTOPEKE STATE PARK LENGTH: Short : 48 lines
Tragedy is something Dustin Wix didn't expect to see on his vacation. The 10-year-old from Celina, Tenn., was playing in the water on the beach at Kiptopeke State Park when he noticed something odd about a small plane and a big helicopter in the air nearby.
``It looked like the plane was trying to turn,'' said Dustin, whose sad eyes showed how fully he understood what had happened. ``When the airplane hit the helicopter, it barely made no sound, like the little shot of a .22.''
Suddenly the airplane was missing a wing. Dustin and a few other children at the park watched as the plane spiraled into the Chesapeake Bay. It hit and disappeared underwater with no time for anyone to get out.
``There was no fire on the plane, nothing,'' said Paul Keating of Toms River, N.J., another vacationing 10-year-old who saw the crash. Some people at the park thought that it was a stunt, or that a radio-controlled model airplane had crashed. It was too quick, too terrible to be real.
``Why did we have to see it?'' Paul asked as Navy helicopters circled over the crash site, searching for the wreckage. Paul and a group of children from New Jersey talked nervously about how scary the experience was. Anybody could have been in that plane, they said. A father. A friend. The children imagined the plane washing up on the beach like a dead whale.
Samuel Brady of the Eastern Shore's Cedar Grove saw the accident as well. Brady had been working outside at Sunset Beach Inn, a mile south of the park, when he heard a loud noise and looked up. He saw the small plane falling.
``They weren't real high up,'' Brady said. ``There was no fire, no smoke. The helicopter didn't swerve or anything. He just kept flying north.''
Amy Corbet, a vacationer from New Jersey, got a chance to look at the helicopter as it rested in a field north of the park. ``I can't believe that that type of plane could take such a big chunk out,'' she said. ILLUSTRATION: Map
Staff
SOURCES: The Naval Institute Guide to the Ships and Aircraft of the
U.S. Fleet; Knight Ridder Tribune.
KEYWORDS: ACCIDENT PLANE ACCIDENT MILITARY U.S. NAVY
HELICOPTERS FATALITY by CNB