Victims ID’d in deadly plane crash into mobile home park
CLEARWATER — Clearwater officials Saturday morning identified the three people killed Thursday night after an airplane crashed into a mobile home in the Bayside Waters 55+ community.
Among the victims was Martha Parry, 86, who Clearwater officials said lived at 2647 Pagoda Drive, the site of the plane crash. Also killed was Mary Ellen Pender, 54, of Treasure Island, who was visiting the mobile home.
The pilot of the single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza V35, who was also killed, was Jemin Patel, who was 54 and a licensed pilot from Melbourne Beach.
Aviation records indicate that the plane was owned by Control Data Inc., a company based in Indianapolis, Indiana. Patel is listed as the company’s owner.
Officials have said that there had been about 10 people in the mobile home socializing after a day of golfing but most left just before the plane, which had taken off from Vero Beach about an hour earlier, suffered engine failure and crashed. It ignited a fire, which destroyed the mobile home and damaged several others adjacent to the crash site.
Moments before the plane fell from the sky the pilot made a panicked emergency radio call.
“Coming to Albert Whitted (Airport),” he said, according to a recording of the transmission. “I can’t see the other airport.”
Seconds passed, then the pilot spoke again.
“I’m losing engine,” he said. There came an indecipherable noise, then several seconds of silence before another pilot spoke.
“Oh, f—k,” the other pilot said. “Tampa (the plane) just hit the ground really hard. I see flames.”
The audio recording, which the Tampa Bay Times obtained through an archive on LiveATC. net, a website that compiles air traffic radio communications, illuminates the final minutes before and after the plane crashed into the Bayside Waters community, killing the pilot and two people on the ground.
Why it went down, and precisely when the pilot began to have trouble, remained unclear Friday. The crash happened amid clear skies, cool air and light winds. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating.
Shortly after the plane went down another pilot in the air said he would circle the area, according to LiveATC audio.
“Tampa, it looks like there’s a structure fire down there,” he said. “It looks like he went into a building.”
A few minutes later, another pilot got on the radio and said the plane had crashed directly below him.
”It looks like it’s into a house,” he said. “I can’t really tell. And there’s still active flames down there and a lot of smoke coming from it. … He is definitely into a house.”
Efforts to reach the company’s owner Friday were not successful. Calls to multiple phone numbers listed for him and his company went straight to a voicemail. A woman who answered the phone Friday at a number listed for someone who shares an address with him in Melbourne Beach declined to comment to a reporter.
Federal Aviation Administration records show the plane is a single-engine fixed-wing aircraft manufactured in 1979. It was one of two planes registered to the Indiana company, along with a Cessna.
A record of the plane’s trip on FlightAware.com, a website that tracks air traffic around the world, showed it took off from the Vero
Beach Regional Airport at 6:08 p.m., though it had been scheduled to depart 13 minutes earlier. The reason for the delayed takeoff is unclear.
The FlightAware track shows the plane flew west, reaching about 6,000 feet as it crossed Osceola, Polk and Hillsborough counties. It was scheduled to land at 6:49 p.m. at the Clearwater Air Park. But shortly after the plane flew over Old Tampa Bay, the flight track shows it turned northwest, then looped back south, passing the airport.
The plane’s tracking log shows it gradually descended, reaching about 600 feet above the ground four minutes before the crash. The pilot then appeared to be trying to regain altitude, reaching as high as 1,500 feet before the plane then rapidly descended again as it moved over U.S. 19.
At the time of impact, the plane was flying close to 140 miles per hour. Todd Scher, a spokesperson for Vero Beach Regional Airport, where the plane took off, said Friday that Clearwater police contacted him. They wanted to know more about the plane, the pilot and the potential cause of the crash. Scher told police to speak with management at Corporate Air Inc., an airport contractor responsible for maintenance and fueling of some aircraft.
A spokesperson for Corporate Air Inc. said Friday that the company’s owner, Roger Pridgeon, did not want to comment.