THE LEDGER-STAR
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, March 13, 1995 TAG: 9503130177
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE AND SUSIE STOUGHTON, STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: SUFFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 100 lines
Three people were killed and three others were hurt late Sunday when the small plane they were in slammed into trees little more than a mile from an airfield the pilot was trying to reach before his plane ran out of fuel.
One of the survivors, a woman, managed to get help after limping to a farmhouse about a half-mile from where the plane crashed in the Holland section, southwest of downtown.
The plane was returning to Hampton Roads from Atlanta where the passengers had spent the day watching NASCAR races. The identities of the victims, all believed to be Hampton Roads residents, were being withheld this morning until relatives could be notified.
It was unclear if the pilot was among the survivors.
The most seriously injured survivor was in critical condition in the Trauma Center at Sentara Norfolk General Hospital where he was flown by the Nightingale helicopter ambulance. The two injured women were taken to Obici Hospital and one of them was transferred to Norfolk General.
Lt. Jeff Messinger, a Suffolk Fire Department spokesman, said the woman at Obici was in stable condition. The condition of the woman who was taken to Norfolk was not immediately known.
The crash occurred just after 10 p.m. at the edge of a peanut field in the 500 block of Lummis Road, about a mile from Holland Road. The single-engine, six-passenger Cherokee was ripped to pieces when it hit two trees, about 40 feet off the ground.
Becky and Britt Barnes were in their Pulley Farm home watching television when they heard the crash, but they didn't immediately realize what it was.
``It wasn't overly loud. We just thought something fell over in the garage,'' he said early today. ``We just looked at each other and said, `What was that?' ''
The couple went to their back porch to check for the source of the noise, but saw nothing unusual so they went back to the TV.
About 15 minutes later, however, their dog started barking and they heard a woman screaming in the back yard.
At first, the couple was scared. ``I wasn't going to open the door,'' said Becky Barnes, 35, who instead dialed the police to report that there was someone on her property. Her husband went to the door and shouted to the woman.
``She said they needed help, that they had had a plane crash,'' Becky Barnes said. The woman said they had run out of fuel while flying back from car races in Atlanta.
The couple let the woman in and relayed what she said to police. She was bloodied and limping and appeared to be in shock.
Becky Barnes' sister happened to be visiting, so the couple left the injured woman in her care and - with a flashlight and blankets in hand - raced into the night to look for the downed plane. They stumbled across it moments later.
They found a woman in near hysteria with a man's body drapped across her. They were pinned in the wreckage. There also was a man alive in the debris.
As fate would have it, Becky Barnes is a nurse in the intensive care unit at Obici Hospital and she immediately set about trying to calm the survivors and care for their injuries until paramedics arrived.
Later she helped rescue personnel with intravenous fluids and oxygen. Her husband, meanwhile, helped get the injured man loaded into the Nightingale helicopter, which landed in the field near the crash site. ``It took about eight of us'' to load the injured man in, he said.
There was confusion this morning about where the plane had originally intended to land and with whom the pilot was talking by radio when the crash occurred. Some reports listed his destination as the Suffolk Municipal Airport which is about five miles east of the crash site. Other reports indicated that the plane was headed for an airfield in Newport News.
Whatever the intended destination, police said the pilot had turned toward a grass landing strip where he hoped to make an emergency landing after realizing he was almost out of fuel. The private field, used by local parachutists and glider pilots, has no lights.
Instead, the plane hit the trees when it apparently ran out of gas. As a result, there was no explosion or fire on impact.
Most of the fuselage fell to the ground on its right side, pinning two of the survivors inside with the three dead men. One wing fell to the ground; the other tangled in tree limbs. The plane's engine flew into a swampy area 25 to 30 yards from the crash site.
Had the plane come down moments earlier, the result might have been different. Visitors to the crash site said the aircraft passed over a large, flat peanut field with no obstacles in it before hitting the trees.
The bodies were sent to the State Medical Examiner's office in Norfolk for examination. ILLUSTRATION: JOHN H. SHEALLY II/photos
A tattered wing of the six-passenger aircraft hangs in the trees
that ripped apart the struggling plane late Sunday night in the
Holland section of Suffolk. The remainder of the plane fell in
several pieces. One survivor was trapped inside the passenger
section.
Of the three injured passengers, one was flown by Nightingale to
Sentara Norfolk General Hospital and the other two initially to
Obici Hospital in Suffolk.
KEYWORDS: ACCIDENT PLANE FATALITIES INJURIES by CNB