Aug 30, 2000 - 11:48 PM

LEXINGTON, Va. (AP) - A small plane crashed in front of a fraternity at Washington and Lee University on Wednesday, killing both passengers, one of whom either fell from the plane or tried to jump, police said.

One person on the ground was hit in the head by a piece of debris but wasn't seriously injured, officials said.

"The fact that it only damaged a sidewalk and maybe a brick wall is remarkable," said Lt. Steve Crowder of the Lexington Police Department. Few students were on campus since most fall classes won't begin for another week.

Witnesses told police they heard a noise like an explosion and saw someone hanging onto the side of the two-seat plane as it spiraled toward the ground about 5:30 p.m.

Trooper Mike Hamilton said one of the victims either jumped or fell out and one body was found outside the wreckage. Neither victim's identity was immediately released.

Hamilton said the plane was heading for Daytona Beach, Fla., and had made a stop at Martinsburg, W.Va. At some point, the pilot changed the flight plan to land at Columbia, S.C.

Becky Gordon, a house mother at a fraternity house, was in the parking lot when she saw the plane diving toward her.

"I could see it coming down and I thought, 'That crazy fool, what is he doing?'" Gordon said. Then she noticed a wing of the plane was missing and saw the aircraft explode in midair.

"I hit the pavement," Gordon said.

The Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating.

Thursday, August 31, 2000
Witnesses: Piper broke up before crash; someone jumped or was thrown
Plane falls on Lexington

The plane was carrying at least two people, both of whom died. No one on the ground was injured.

By Lindsey Nair and MATT CHITTUM
The Roanoke Times

   A single-engine plane came apart over downtown Lexington and crashed about 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, scattering debris and human remains over much of Lexington and into Rockbridge County.

    Witnesses told police they saw a person falling from the plane about 400 feet before it crashed.

    "One either jumped out or was thrown out," said Lt. Steve Crowder of the Lexington Police Department. "There was something in his or her hand that appeared to be a duffel bag."

    The plane was carrying at least two people, said Virginia State Trooper Mike Hamilton. "If there was more, we don't know. We found two driver's licenses," Hamilton said.

    State police would not release those names until they were confirmed and relatives were notified.

    The remains of the person who was outside the plane were found in Davidson Park, a grassy area off Washington Street near the Washington and Lee University campus.

    Crowder said the duffel bag contained clothes. Investigators could not be sure what sex the victims were, he added.

    "There are body parts that are scattered over at least a four-block area," said Crowder.

    The main impact of the largest chunk of the plane, which included the fuselage, occurred in front of W&L's Pi Kappa Phi fraternity house. That chunk burrowed 3 feet through sidewalk and asphalt.

    "I haven't seen an engine yet," Crowder added. "We're still looking for a wing."

    The plane was a 1959 Piper, but the model was unclear Wednesday night, Hamilton said.

    The plane's origin was unknown, but its last stop was Martinsburg, W.Va., Hamilton said. The original destination in its flight plan was Daytona Beach, Fla., but that was changed in mid-flight to Columbia, S.C., he said.

    The weather at the time of the crash was cloudy. Soon after the crash, it started raining.

    "Roanoke Regional Airport lost one plane off the radar," Crowder said.

    Eyewitness reports were confused Wednesday evening.

    "So many people saw so much. It's a mess," Hamilton said. "This is unreal, it's just the grace of God nobody on the ground got hurt."

    Witness reports began with Virginia Military Institute cadets who said they saw the plane overhead as they were exercising before dinner.

    "It came from the direction of VMI, then it just circled and nose-dived," Hamilton said.

    Sgt. Torben Pedersen of the Lexington Police Department was at his home in the city when he saw the plane in a tight spiral. He said he saw one wing intact with the other wing broken but still attached.

    Jane Shaw of Lexington was picking children up from basketball practice at Downing Middle School when she heard "a tremendous noise."

    She looked out her car window and saw the plane with one wing.

    "It was low and sputtering and it just dropped out of the sky," she said. "It was a shocking thing to see something like that fall out of the sky into a city."

    Because W&L students are not scheduled to return to campus until next week, few people were nearby and no one on the ground was hurt. Although parts of the plane were reported throughout the city and parts of Rockbridge County, no building damage was reported.

    As the rain began to taper off, volunteers from Lexington, Kerr's Creek and Buena Vista fire departments canvassed the grass of Davidson Park with plastic trash bags, collecting debris.

    Hamilton said the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board were expected to arrive in Lexington at 9 a.m. today to investigate the crash.

Friday, September 01, 2000
In talking to the Roanoke tower, the pilot gave no indication of distress
Crash cause a mystery

Safety officials prepare to load the wreckage of a Piper airplane that crashed into a Lexington street Thursday afternoon.

"It's probably one of the finest single-engine aircraft that has ever been built," said one pilot of the Comanche 24-250.

By Kimberly O'Brien
The Roanoke Times

   Air traffic controllers tracked the Piper Comanche for about 10 minutes as it neared Lexington on Wednesday afternoon.

    Things at first seemed normal. The tower at Roanoke Regional Airport received two radio transmissions from the pilot before the single-engine plane suddenly disappeared from radar.

    Then, without any apparent sign of distress, the plane dropped from the sky. Witnesses described seeing a wing hanging off the fuselage as the Piper spiraled toward the ground. Pieces of the aircraft spun in every direction as it plummeted into a sidewalk in downtown Lexington about 5:30 p.m.

    The two people aboard never had a chance. And investigators now face the painstaking process of determining what went wrong.

    "The plane came apart in the air," said 1st Sgt. Joe Peters of the Virginia State Police. "We haven't found anything in the plane wreckage that indicated fire or anything that would cause an explosion."

    Two investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board arrived in Lexington on Thursday to begin figuring out why the 1959 Comanche broke apart and then crashed, killing the two men aboard. After the debris was taken to an empty factory building in Buena Vista, where the plane will be reconstructed, a biohazard cleanup contractor came in to pick up the remaining bits of flesh and sterilize the area.

    According to a law enforcement official familiar with the investigation, police also plan to test a white substance found inside the wreckage to determine whether it is an illegal drug.

    Peters said Thursday that cocaine was not found.

    But so far, what happened in the brief time before the crash is still a mystery.

    The pilot was identified Thursday as Jack Anthony Gambino, 43, from Old Westbury, N.Y., and the passenger as John T. Kabelka, 42, of Boca Raton, Fla. Authorities said Gambino was on his way to Daytona Beach, Fla., for an annual maintenance check on his Piper.

    Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Jim Peters wouldn't say what the plane's two radio transmissions were about. He did say, however, that it wouldn't be unusual for the pilot to contact the Roanoke tower as he was flying into its airspace. The pilot gave no indication of distress, he said.

    According to some Piper experts, the behavior of Gambino's Comanche 24-250, considered by some to be an excellent aircraft, was unusual. Despite its age, the plane had never had an accident, according to the FAA.

    "It's probably one of the finest single-engine aircraft that has ever been built," said Bruce Berman of the International Comanche Society in Bethany, Okla.

    "The airplane's a good solid airplane. They're safe planes. The majority of those built are still flying. But there are accidents."

    Gambino fueled up at 1:05 p.m. at Republic Airport in Farmingdale, N.Y, an airport employee said. He had left the Long Island airport by 2 p.m., headed to Martinsburg, W.Va. Gambino at some point changed his destination from Daytona Beach to South Carolina.

    According to Trooper Mike Hamilton, Gambino and Kabelka were headed to South Carolina to see Kabelka's father.

    Gambino and Kabelka planned to fly to Myrtle Beach, near Kabelka's father, stay the night and play a round of golf in the morning before heading to Florida, Hamilton said.

    A family member of Kabelka's told the trooper that the family had misgivings about Kabelka getting on the plane.

    "They had asked him not to get on the plane, not to go because his father had a bad feeling," Hamilton said.

    Gambino, a father of four who owned a trucking company and taught martial arts to children, was an experienced pilot, Hamilton said. However, Gambino was not instrument-rated, meaning he wasn't qualified to fly using only his instrument panel.

    The weather was cloudy Wednesday afternoon, with a cloud base about 6,000 feet above the ground. Visibility was about 10 miles.

    Still, at 8,500 feet above sea level, the point at which the plane disappeared from radar, Gambino could have been flying in blue sky and probably would have been fine flying the plane visually, Berman said.

    If the engine had shut off, Berman said, Gambino would have had about 20 miles to decide where to land.

    No one has said yet whether the weather played a part in the crash.

    Berman said pilot error has generally been the cause of Comanche crashes.

    "They do not fall from the sky," Berman said.

    Weather will be one of the areas the NTSB will examine. NTSB air safety investigator Luke Schiada said investigators will continue to talk to witnesses, who number in the hundreds. The entire Virginia Military Institute football team was on the practice field and saw the plane fly over in distress, as did many others.

    Schiada said the wreckage distribution pattern will be of particular interest. He requested that anyone who finds debris call the Lexington Police Department at 463-9177.

    A preliminary report will be issued in a week, followed by a full report in six months. Three months later, the NTSB in Washington probably will announce its determination of the cause of the crash.

Friday, September 01, 2000

Lives were spared by fateful timing

"That no one on the ground was hurt has to be the protection of the Holy Spirit," a witness said.

By MATT CHITTUM
The Roanoke Times

   LEXINGTON - An hour earlier or a week later.

    If the wounded little Piper Comanche plane had fallen out of the gray sky into downtown Lexington at either of those times, the degree of tragedy could have been doubled, tripled or worse.

    An hour before the plane burrowed through a sidewalk, Washington Street was busy with people headed to city hall, up the block, or to the doctor's office across the street.

    A week later, the street would have been buzzing with Washington and Lee University students bound for poster-plastered rooms along fraternity row.

    Instead, the rapidly disintegrating plane corkscrewed into an empty sidewalk at an empty intersection. It missed a frat house by 20 feet, a doctor's office and a house by 20 yards, and shattered a 6-inch-thick slab of concrete sidewalk directly beneath some power lines. Debris from the plane merely scratched the paint on a rental car 10 feet away.

    "That no one on the ground was hurt has to be the protection of the Holy Spirit," said Bill Hoot, a radiologist from Fort Worth, Texas, who was sitting in the living room of the house the plane just missed.

    But nothing could protect the pilot and his passenger from a sudden spiral to their deaths.

    From what witnesses saw, their last moments must have been a blur of white-knuckle terror.

    Jack Gambino, a father of four from Old Westbury, N.Y., and his friend, a professional kick boxing trainer from Florida, left Long Island, N.Y., about 2 p.m. They were taking the plane to Daytona Beach, Fla., for routine maintenance.

    As the plane passed over Lexington, its engine began to sputter.

    Bruce Wells was leaving the Kmart store in the eastern part of town when he heard the engine falter and looked up to see the plane's 15-foot left wing snap and fold back against the side of the aircraft.

    Pat Ruley was downtown when he heard a "scraping noise, a tinnish noise." Then the plane's engine began to roar.

    Wells saw it climb briefly and flip over. Then the 2,800-pound plane plummeted toward the ground.

    "It sounded like a fighter plane trying to pull out of a dive," Ruley said.

    Gambino didn't even have time to make a distress call.

    Parts began to fly from the spinning plane, sprayed over a square mile of Lexington by the centrifugal force. The doors ripped free, one landing in Stonewall Jackson Cemetery six blocks away.

    The passenger clutched a handhold in the cockpit to keep from being thrown from the plane.

    Witnesses reported seeing the man's legs sticking from the side of the plane, according to state Trooper Mike Hamilton.

    Perhaps he passed out because the spinning caused the blood to rush from his head, or perhaps his strength gave out, but when the plane was about 500 feet up, the force of the spin hurled him at the ground.

    That part of his terror was mercifully short. Traveling at 200 mph, as police estimated, it took less than two seconds before he slammed into an asphalt roadway in Davidson Park.

    Part of his body was shredded on impact, police said. What remained skidded for 60 yards, hitting a curb and a tree along the way.

    Gambino remained in the plane as it smashed into the sidewalk and a stone wall 78 yards from where the passenger hit.

    Sitting across the street in the living room of the house rented by his son, a W&L student, Bill Hoot thought a bomb had gone off.

    He went outside and looked at the wreckage for several minutes before he realized it was a plane that had crashed. The 24-foot fuselage had been reduced to a tangle of rivet-pierced metal 10 feet long.

    Hoot is a physician, but it never occurred to him he could help anyone, because there was nothing before him he could recognize as a patient.

    The rental car the plane nearly hit was his. He was about a minute away from climbing into it when he heard the crash.

    Thursday afternoon, when authorities used a backhoe to tear the fuselage from the crater it had made, it stretched out like a skein of yarn being pulled apart. Once rigid enough to fly at 200 mph, it now dragged the ground like fabric.

    Inside the 3-foot-deep crater lay the plane's shattered engine, soaking in a soup of fuel, oil and rainwater.

    Other parts of the plane were retrieved from all over the city. One of the wings was found in front of an apartment building two blocks away. Gambino's logbook landed on a roof nearby.

    Hundreds of people saw the plane at the moment of its distress. Many more found debris from it in their yards.

    Yet no one witnessed the gruesome impact itself, police said. Had they seen it, they might have been in peril themselves.

    "At that moment, nobody was on the street," said Lexington Police Lt. Steve Crowder. "It's just simply incredible."