pavelump
Well-Known Member
from the NY Times
Pilot Walks, Angrily, Away From Crash
By PATRICK HEALY
Published: December 3, 2003
OLBROOK, N.Y., Dec. 2 — The downed pilot wore business attire under his flight suit. He was dazed, slightly bloodied and covered in debris. But as he wrenched open the cockpit of the small plane, he seemed to Jeff Colon to be in remarkably good condition for a man who had just fallen from the sky and crash-landed into two houses.
"I said, `I'm glad you're all right,' " Mr. Colon said Tuesday morning as he watched emergency crews gather pieces of fuselage and wing from his backyard. "He seemed really mad."
Until that moment, it had been a typically quiet morning on Dorothy Street, a middle-class neighborhood in Holbrook, in Suffolk County. Mr. Colon was on the phone with a mechanic about his 1991 Mercury Capri. His wife, Randi, was about to cook eggs for her children. And across the street, Mary Lopreto was getting ready to walk her kids to the school bus.
They said they did not even hear the small, single-engine airplane as it barreled toward their homes. The pilot had been flying to MacArthur Airport in Islip when he radioed the control tower at 8:27 a.m. and said the engine had failed.
Moments later, the plane hit Ms. Lopreto's home, bounced off and slammed onto Dorothy Street and then crashed through the Colons' fence, slamming into their house. The red-and-white plane was wrecked, but the homes and pilot seemed to be merely bruised. No residents were injured.
"It sounded like thunder," Ms. Lopreto said, "a really big thunder that shakes the house."
The plane is registered to Richard Hughes of Islip, and someone of that name was at the emergency room at Stony Brook University Hospital, but aviation officials could not confirm that Mr. Hughes was flying the plane. Mr. Hughes did not return phone calls Tuesday night.
After Mr. Colon heard the boom — which, to him, sounded more like a truck hitting a concrete wall — he sent his wife and children out the front door and ran to help the pilot open the hatch.
Mr. Colon said he asked the pilot whether he was O.K., and the man replied merely, "Yes."
Together they walked to Ms. Lopreto's house to get a drink of water and wait for the ambulances to arrive.
"It's lucky," Mr. Colon said. "Miracles are meant for greater things."
Pilot Walks, Angrily, Away From Crash
By PATRICK HEALY
Published: December 3, 2003
OLBROOK, N.Y., Dec. 2 — The downed pilot wore business attire under his flight suit. He was dazed, slightly bloodied and covered in debris. But as he wrenched open the cockpit of the small plane, he seemed to Jeff Colon to be in remarkably good condition for a man who had just fallen from the sky and crash-landed into two houses.
"I said, `I'm glad you're all right,' " Mr. Colon said Tuesday morning as he watched emergency crews gather pieces of fuselage and wing from his backyard. "He seemed really mad."
Until that moment, it had been a typically quiet morning on Dorothy Street, a middle-class neighborhood in Holbrook, in Suffolk County. Mr. Colon was on the phone with a mechanic about his 1991 Mercury Capri. His wife, Randi, was about to cook eggs for her children. And across the street, Mary Lopreto was getting ready to walk her kids to the school bus.
They said they did not even hear the small, single-engine airplane as it barreled toward their homes. The pilot had been flying to MacArthur Airport in Islip when he radioed the control tower at 8:27 a.m. and said the engine had failed.
Moments later, the plane hit Ms. Lopreto's home, bounced off and slammed onto Dorothy Street and then crashed through the Colons' fence, slamming into their house. The red-and-white plane was wrecked, but the homes and pilot seemed to be merely bruised. No residents were injured.
"It sounded like thunder," Ms. Lopreto said, "a really big thunder that shakes the house."
The plane is registered to Richard Hughes of Islip, and someone of that name was at the emergency room at Stony Brook University Hospital, but aviation officials could not confirm that Mr. Hughes was flying the plane. Mr. Hughes did not return phone calls Tuesday night.
After Mr. Colon heard the boom — which, to him, sounded more like a truck hitting a concrete wall — he sent his wife and children out the front door and ran to help the pilot open the hatch.
Mr. Colon said he asked the pilot whether he was O.K., and the man replied merely, "Yes."
Together they walked to Ms. Lopreto's house to get a drink of water and wait for the ambulances to arrive.
"It's lucky," Mr. Colon said. "Miracles are meant for greater things."
