Mooney drops into my backyard

This has special interest for me because I own a Mooney (that should
take care of the on-topicness). I guess I could put this in
r.a.piloting, but i don't know anyone over there, and I just wanted to
share this with some friends...

About 3:00 this afternoon, a Mooney M20M dropped out of a low overcast,
hit a tree, and ended up in a pond in my back yard. There are
conflicting reports about whether there are 1 or 2 fatalities. My
interpretation is that they recovered 1 body, but the flight plan says
there were 2 aboard.

The crash site is about 100 yards from my deck. The plane is completely
submerged, but I can guess its position by the location of the police
raft and divers that were in the area. I arrived home from work about
6:00 to find news helicopters overhead and crime-scene tape stretched
across my yard.

From the news reports and the visible damage to the tree, I estimate
that the flight path must have been directly toward my house. If it
hadn't gone into the pond, it might have gone into the house. Nobody
would have been home.

Apparently the pilot reported some kind of trouble. Given the weather,
he would have had to be on an instrument flight plan. I think the
ceilings were something below 1000 ft., so when he broke out, he
wouldn't have had much time to select a landing spot. Unfortunately, he
was over a fairly densely populated suburban area.

As I write this (10 PM) there are generator light stands lighting up the
whole area, but most of the rescue/recovery people have left. I think
the remaining crew are just guarding the scene overnight. They don't
seem to be looking for the second body, if there is one. My belief is
that they have concluded there was only one person aboard. I guess I'll
be serving coffee to the NTSB folks in the morning.

Sorry for the downer. I'd much rather be relating a story about my most
recent $100 hamburger.

Here are some news stories:
WRAL story: http://www.wral.com/news/3263882/detail.html
WTVD story and pictures:
http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/news/050...lanecrash.html
NBC 17 story: http://www.nbc17.com/news/3263998/detail.html
News & Observer story:
http://www.news-observer.com/front/s...-3165256c.html


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