7 dead after airshow jet crashes into road

Pilot said to be in critical condition, 14 others treated.

LONDON — A military jet taking part in a British airshow crashed into a busy main road, killing seven people and injuring more than a dozen others, police said Saturday.

The Hawker Hunter fighter jet, which was participating in the Shoreham Airshow near Brighton in southern England, hit several vehicles on a nearby road as it crashed Saturday afternoon. Witnesses told local TV that the jet appeared to have crashed when it failed to pull out of a loop maneuver

West Sussex Police said seven died at the scene and one patient with life-threatening injuries was taken to the hospital. Another 14 people were treated for minor injuries.

News video and pho- tographs showed a fireball erupting near trees and huge plumes of thick black smoke rising. A witness, Stephen Jones, told the BBC that the pilot had just begun his display.

“He’d gone up into a loop and as he was coming out of the loop I just thought, you’re too low, you’re too low, pull up. And he flew straight into the ground either on or

Witness very close to the A27, which runs past the airport,” Jones said.

Officials said all the casualties were believed to have occurred on the road, and no one on the airfield was believed injured.

Hours after the crash, the police had no comment about the pilot’s fate. CNN reported that the pilot had been pulled from the wreckage in critical condition.

The road was closed in both directions Saturday.

The airshow is sponsored by the Royal Air Forces Association, a charity that aids service members and veterans.

The crash was the second at the airshow in recent years. In 2007, Brian Brown, a stuntman who had performed aerial stunts in movies including the James Bond film “Tomorrow Never Dies,” was killed when the World War II fighter plane he was flying crashed during the show.