Aircraft strikes, kills jogger
Father of two didn’t hear failing plane approach
HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. – Robert Gary Jones was a pharmaceuticals salesman on a business trip, looking forward to getting home to celebrate his daughter’s third birthday. He was enjoying a moment to himself on this resort island, jogging on the beach and listening to his iPod.
Officials say the Woodstock, Ga., man neither saw nor heard what struck him from behind Monday evening: A single-engine plane making an emergency landing.
The Lancair IV-P aircraft, which can be built from a kit, had lost its propeller and was “basically gliding” as it hit and instantly killed Jones, Ed Allen, the coroner for Beaufort County on the South Carolina coast, said Tuesday.
“There’s no noise,” said aviation expert Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general for the National Transportation Safety Board. “So the jogger, with his ear buds in, and the plane without an engine, you’re basically a stealth aircraft. Who would expect to look up?”
The pilot, Edward I. Smith of Chesapeake, Va., and his lone passenger both walked away from the crash landing near the Hilton Head Marriott Resort and Spa.
Jones, a 38-year-old salesman for GlaxoSmithKline, was in Hilton Head on a business trip and was looking forward to returning home for his daughter’s birthday Wednesday, his mother said.
The plane took off from Orlando, Fla., at 4:45 p.m. Monday and was en route to Virginia when it started leaking oil at about 13,000 feet, said Joheida Fister, spokeswoman for Hilton Head Island fire and rescue.
Fister said the pilot determined he couldn’t make it to Hilton Head Airport. He told authorities oil on the windshield blocked his vision and the propeller had come off, forcing him to attempt a beach landing.
Smith confirmed he was flying the plane when he returned to the scene Tuesday, when the four-seater aircraft was hoisted onto a trailer hitched to a pickup truck and towed from the beach. Smith said he didn’t want to talk about the crash.
“I’ve got a lot of issues going on right now,” Smith said. “I’ve got a plane that’s all torn up. And I’ve got a young man that I killed.”
The airplane model that killed Jones has a turbine engine and can fly up to 370 mph, according to the Lancair Web site. The “fastbuild kit” is “fully FAA approved,” the site says.
Joseph Bartels, chief executive officer of Lancair International, the Redmond, Ore.-based company that produces the aircraft kits, said the firm does not produce the engine, which is purchased separately.