THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, January 11, 1996 TAG: 9601110339
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY STEVE STONE, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Short : 42 lines
The hunt for a pilot from Indiana whose whose single-engine plane apparently went down over the Chesapeake Bay Saturday night yielded a discouraging discovery Wednesday - parts of an aircraft and human remains.
``They have a wheel and part of a landing gear,'' said Lt. Laura Dickey of the Coast Guard's 5th District operations center in Portsmouth. ``But we don't know if it's from the plane we're looking for.''
State police spokeswoman Tammy Van Dame said the human remains were sent to the State Medical Examiner's office in Northampton County for examination. But the remains may not be sufficient to make a positive identification, she said.
The aircraft parts will be turned over to a Federal Aviation Administration team, which is expected to arrive in Virginia today, she said.
The Coast Guard has been searching for the plane daily since it went down, although the winter storm that hit the area over the weekend hampered the hunt.
State police also have been searching the area.
The discoveries were made about midafternoon by a state game warden who was participating in a search of Northampton County beaches, Van Dame said. The debris was found, apparently washed up on the beach, north of Cape Charles.
State troopers and Virginia game wardens continued to comb the area for further signs of debris, but found none by nightfall.
The pilot, identified as Preston Henry, an attorney from Winamac, Ind., left Gaithersburg, Md., Saturday night en route to Fayetteville, N.C. The plane disappeared from radar screens about 7:45 p.m.
The last radar contact showed the plane flying northwest about 10 miles north of Cape Charles. The spot where the debris was found is about four miles from where the plane is believed to have gone down.
KEYWORDS: ACCIDENT PLANE by CNB