Tue, May 18, 2004
F-16s Collide Over Indiana
Two F-16s collided in the air near Oaktown (IN) Monday. One
pilot was killed, the other was hurt. He was hospitalized after
parachuting to the ground.
"We heard a big explosion. It pretty well shook the building,"
said Cecil Meeks, who owns a gas station in Oaktown. "And then we
went out and you could see one of the guys parachuting down, and
you could see one of the fighter planes just flying around in
circles till he came to the ground. There was another plane up
there and he was circling around while the guy was parachuting
down."
A spokesman for the Indiana State Police said one of the
aircraft went down near Oaktown. The other crashed across the
border in Illinois, he said.
Another witness, Lisa Hall, told the Associated Press that she
saw one of the pilots after the collision. "I walked outside and
saw the man coming down in the parachute," Hall said. "His
parachute wasn’t open, it was collapsed."
Former Knox County Sheriff Don Kirkham heard the commotion from
above while he was cutting his grass. Spotting a parachute drifting
toward the ground, Kirkham told the AP he ran to help the injured
pilot.
"He’s OK. He’s bleeding from facial wounds," Kirkham
said. "All he was concerned about was his buddy. He said
‘I’m not worried about anything but my buddy,’ so
we cornered him and got him into an ambulance."
A military team was en route to Oaktown to take control of the
crash investigation, according to a spokesman for the Air National
Guard Base in nearby Terre Haute.
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