Pilot dies in crash at Hayden elementary

An experimental aircraft crashed into a Hayden elementary school Friday, killing the pilot but not injuring two teachers who were outside eating lunch about 25 yards from the crash site.

Spokane resident Kenneth L. Lien, 65, was the only person in the plane when it crashed and came to rest upside down near the southeast corner of the school. Lien was partially ejected and pronounced dead at the scene.

Had the crash happened after Monday, hundreds of children could have been on the Atlas Elementary School playground. Just a day before the crash, kindergartners were playing in the yard as part of their school orientation.

“It’s very scary,” said Stacie Lemburg, who has two children ages 6 and 10 at the school.

Lemburg said she had never worried that the school, which was not seriously damaged, is close to the Coeur d’Alene Airport.

It’s unsettling, she said, but she still plans to send her children to school Tuesday.

“They have to go,” Lemburg said. “It’s part of life, but how sad will it be walking past that spot?”

A crying woman who answered Lien’s listed phone number identified herself as his wife and called him “the most kindest, most well-liked man.”

“Everybody’s going to miss him,” she said before handing the phone to her brother, who said he wasn’t ready to talk.

The crash was reported at 12:13 p.m. The teachers who witnessed it didn’t hear anything until the small plane bounced off the grass and skidded to a stop against the southeast corner of the building. Witnesses said the plane’s engine sputtered, then made no noise as it crashed to the ground, according to the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Department.

Deputies responded to the scene and secured it, draping a yellow tarp over Lien’s body until the Federal Aviation Administration took over the investigation.

Neighbor Marcus Horton said he feared such a crash.

“What were they thinking building a school so close to an airport?” he asked.

Coeur d’Alene Airport is a mile away from the school, which opened in September 2005.

Questions over building Atlas Elementary so close to an airport were fully explored before construction started, said Hazel Bauman, superintendent of the Coeur d’Alene School District.

“When we built the school several years ago, we had it checked it out with the FAA and it was given a green light that it wasn’t in any flight path,” said Bauman.