March 22, 2009
The AP is reporting that a single engine turboprop plane has crashed while attempting to land at the airport in Butte, Montana. Landing 500 feet short of the airport, the Montana Standard reported in an online story that it crashed in Butte’s Holy Cross Cemetery.
Reportedly, the plane was on route from Oroville, California to Bozeman, Montana, when the pilot canceled his flight plan and attempted to land in Butte, Montana instead.
17 people were killed in the crash, including several children. All were reportedly on their way to enjoy a ski trip.
Federal Aviation Administration spokesman, Fergus said the plane was registered to Eagle Cap Leasing Inc. in Enterprise, Oregon, but he did not know who the pilot was.
An eyewitness told the Standard that the plane was doing steep angle turns and then went into a nose dive, crashing into the trees in the cemetary.
Search continues for missionary plane in Venezuela
Date: 3/6/2009
By RACHEL JONES
Associated Press Writer
CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan rescuers are still searching for a small plane flown by a U.S. missionary that vanished two weeks ago in the jungles of southern Venezuela, an official with the country’s civil aviation agency said Thursday.
Rescue coordinator Gilberto Gonzalez said officials called off aerial searches several days after the plane disappeared amid stormy weather on Feb. 16, but continue to work with as many as 80 indigenous volunteers who are searching the jungle for wreckage.
“We haven’t stopped looking,” Gonzalez said. “We’re waiting to hear from people on the ground, and trying to work with the resources that we have.”
Robert Norton, a 48-year-old missionary from Bryant, Alabama, had six passengers aboard, including his wife Neiba, missionary Gladis Zerpa, and two adults who were accompanying two sick children he was taking from a hospital to their villages in Venezuela’s remote southern state of Bolivar, said David Gates, a friend of the pilot.
Gates, who is president of Tennessee-based Gospel Ministries International, said the Bolivar state governor’s office loaned rescuers a helicopter, and that friends and family members had asked for help from the Canadian government, which has used its satellite system to track emergency signals from past plane crash sites.
Gates said Norton’s father, Elwin, was also a missionary who died while piloting a plane that crashed in Mexico 29 years ago.
“What makes this thing so painful is that his father was killed with his passengers when he went down in the jungle too,” Gates said. “His mother lost both her husband and a son the same way.”
Nytta Norton of Bryant, Alabama, said she doubted her son would be found alive, but that she trusted God to “see a bigger picture.”
“It’s as though the jungle has just swallowed them up,” she told The Associated Press. “I hope they’ll find them alive and OK. But it has been so long, the chance of that is pretty slim.”
Norton and his wife lived in a village outside the town of Santa Elena, a sparsely populated area of forests, grasslands and plateaus. He provided emergency medical transportation to remote indigenous villages for more than five years as director of Adventist Medical Aviation Venezuela, part of the McDonald, Tennessee-based Gospel Ministries that Gates runs.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
By RACHEL JONES
Associated Press Writer
CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan rescuers are still searching for a small plane flown by a U.S. missionary that vanished two weeks ago in the jungles of southern Venezuela, an official with the country’s civil aviation agency said Thursday.
Rescue coordinator Gilberto Gonzalez said officials called off aerial searches several days after the plane disappeared amid stormy weather on Feb. 16, but continue to work with as many as 80 indigenous volunteers who are searching the jungle for wreckage.
“We haven’t stopped looking,” Gonzalez said. “We’re waiting to hear from people on the ground, and trying to work with the resources that we have.”
Robert Norton, a 48-year-old missionary from Bryant, Alabama, had six passengers aboard, including his wife Neiba, missionary Gladis Zerpa, and two adults who were accompanying two sick children he was taking from a hospital to their villages in Venezuela’s remote southern state of Bolivar, said David Gates, a friend of the pilot.
Gates, who is president of Tennessee-based Gospel Ministries International, said the Bolivar state governor’s office loaned rescuers a helicopter, and that friends and family members had asked for help from the Canadian government, which has used its satellite system to track emergency signals from past plane crash sites.
Gates said Norton’s father, Elwin, was also a missionary who died while piloting a plane that crashed in Mexico 29 years ago.
“What makes this thing so painful is that his father was killed with his passengers when he went down in the jungle too,” Gates said. “His mother lost both her husband and a son the same way.”
Nytta Norton of Bryant, Alabama, said she doubted her son would be found alive, but that she trusted God to “see a bigger picture.”
“It’s as though the jungle has just swallowed them up,” she told The Associated Press. “I hope they’ll find them alive and OK. But it has been so long, the chance of that is pretty slim.”
Norton and his wife lived in a village outside the town of Santa Elena, a sparsely populated area of forests, grasslands and plateaus. He provided emergency medical transportation to remote indigenous villages for more than five years as director of Adventist Medical Aviation Venezuela, part of the McDonald, Tennessee-based Gospel Ministries that Gates runs.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
Indiana pilot ordered to pay $12M in Ala. lawsuit
Date: 2/6/2009
DOTHAN, Ala. (AP) — The money troubles of an Indiana financial manager accused of staging a plane crash to fake his own death got worse when an Alabama judge ordered him to pay $12 million in a lawsuit stemming from the sale of an airplane.
A judge ordered Marcus Schrenker, 38, to pay the money Thursday in a lawsuit filed by an Alabama man claiming Schrenker cheated him in the deal.
Barnett Hudson’s lawsuit said Schrenker fraudulently sold him a damaged airplane in 2002. In a December letter to Hudson’s attorney, Schrenker wrote that he was broke and wouldn’t defend himself.
Schrenker was facing more than $9 million in court judgments and potential penalties when authorities say he bailed out of his plane over Alabama last month and let it crash to make it appear he was dead.
According to the fraud lawsuit, Schrenker advertised a plane for sale and said it had never been damaged. However, Hudson later learned the plane had extensive damage from a “hard landing” in 2001.
The suit also alleged Schrenker collected almost $100,000 on an insurance claim from the hard landing, but made no repairs to the plane other than “cosmetic” ones.
In his ruling, Circuit Judge Lawson Little wrote that Schrenker had a legal obligation to report damage to the aircraft before selling it to Hudson, a resident of Dothan in southeast Alabama. Little said the failure could have resulted in an accident that killed Hudson. He imposed $3 million in compensatory damages and $9 million in punitive damages.
“The court takes judicial notice of the fact that Mr. Schrenker recently attempted to fake his own death and deliberately crashed his airplane in the panhandle of Florida; again, putting at risk innocent persons and businesses on the ground,” Little wrote.
Little ruled on the same day a judge in Indiana froze the assets of Schrenker and his wife, who has filed for divorce.
Schrenker has been jailed in Florida since his arrest at a Panhandle campground on Jan. 13, two days after authorities say he parachuted from his airplane and left it pilotless over Alabama. The plane went down in the Panhandle near the coast.
Schrenker pleaded not guilty to charges of deliberately crashing the aircraft and making a false distress call.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
DOTHAN, Ala. (AP) — The money troubles of an Indiana financial manager accused of staging a plane crash to fake his own death got worse when an Alabama judge ordered him to pay $12 million in a lawsuit stemming from the sale of an airplane.
A judge ordered Marcus Schrenker, 38, to pay the money Thursday in a lawsuit filed by an Alabama man claiming Schrenker cheated him in the deal.
Barnett Hudson’s lawsuit said Schrenker fraudulently sold him a damaged airplane in 2002. In a December letter to Hudson’s attorney, Schrenker wrote that he was broke and wouldn’t defend himself.
Schrenker was facing more than $9 million in court judgments and potential penalties when authorities say he bailed out of his plane over Alabama last month and let it crash to make it appear he was dead.
According to the fraud lawsuit, Schrenker advertised a plane for sale and said it had never been damaged. However, Hudson later learned the plane had extensive damage from a “hard landing” in 2001.
The suit also alleged Schrenker collected almost $100,000 on an insurance claim from the hard landing, but made no repairs to the plane other than “cosmetic” ones.
In his ruling, Circuit Judge Lawson Little wrote that Schrenker had a legal obligation to report damage to the aircraft before selling it to Hudson, a resident of Dothan in southeast Alabama. Little said the failure could have resulted in an accident that killed Hudson. He imposed $3 million in compensatory damages and $9 million in punitive damages.
“The court takes judicial notice of the fact that Mr. Schrenker recently attempted to fake his own death and deliberately crashed his airplane in the panhandle of Florida; again, putting at risk innocent persons and businesses on the ground,” Little wrote.
Little ruled on the same day a judge in Indiana froze the assets of Schrenker and his wife, who has filed for divorce.
Schrenker has been jailed in Florida since his arrest at a Panhandle campground on Jan. 13, two days after authorities say he parachuted from his airplane and left it pilotless over Alabama. The plane went down in the Panhandle near the coast.
Schrenker pleaded not guilty to charges of deliberately crashing the aircraft and making a false distress call.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.