Co-pilot dies after fall from plane in NC
RALEIGH, N.C. — A 23-year-old man who “exited” a plane Friday afternoon before it made an emergency landing at Raleigh-Durham International Airport was found dead around 7 p.m. Friday in Fuquay-Varina, authorities said.
After a massive search that involved several municipal, county and federal agencies, the man’s body was found behind a house near Sunset Lake and Hilltop Needmore roads, Darshan Patel, operations manager for Wake County emergency management, said at a news briefing.
The man was identified as Charles Hew Crooks, 23, of Raleigh, according to a post on the Fuquay-Varina Police Department’s Facebook page.
Crooks was the plane’s co-pilot, the Fuquay-Varina Police Department said.
Fuquay-Varina police said Crooks was found after a resident in the Sonoma Springs subdivision flagged down search crews who already were in the vicinity of the neighborhood.
That was the tragic ending to a confusing emergency. Shortly before 3 p.m. Friday, a twin-engine turbo prop aircraft reported landing gear issues as it approached the airport, according to the airport. The plane landed and veered into the grass, according to the airport.
The pilot, the only passenger on the plane when it reached the ground, was taken to a Duke University hospital with minor injuries, an airport spokesperson said.
Authorities received a report about the missing man around 2:30 or 2:45 p.m., Patel said. By 5 p.m., EMS, police and fire departments were searching a large swath of Wake County for a second person who may have “exited the plane while it was in air,” said Carolyn Roman with the Town of Cary.
Patel didn’t know whether Crooks had jumped or fallen, he said. He did not have a parachute, Patel said. He did not know how high the plane was flying when Crooks exited the plane, but a map of the flight path suggests the plane was at about 3,850 feet.
Local, state and federal authorities, including the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board, are continuing to investigate.
According to FlightAware. com, the plane departed from Raeford in Hoke County at 1:10 p.m. and landed about 2:49 p.m.
Because the flight was not a commercial flight, airport officials did not know whether the Raleigh-Durham airport was the intended destination.
Local, state and federal authorities, including the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board, are continuing to investigate.