Wed, Feb 21, 2007
Wreckage May Be From Drug Plane
A businessman stumbled onto
something quite unexpected during a recent hunting trip near the
Atchafalaya River in southern Louisiana: the wreckage of a small
aircraft.
"I was beating the bushes for rabbits," Harold Schoeffler told
the Acadiana Advocate, when he came across the wreckage near a
canal. He says he found what appeared to be part of an airplane,
but he wasn't certain until he discovered the plane's fuselage and
floats 100 feet apart.
"The wings are broken off. The plane burned," Schoeffler said of
his February 11 discovery. "You can see the path of plane parts
where it came through the trees."
Federal investigators were very interested in Schoeffler's
discovery... as neither the FAA nor NTSB have any record of a crash
in that area.
"I haven’t been able to find any lead on it," said NTSB
regional aviation safety director Hector Casanova, who is now
pouring over records of missing planes from the past 30 years.
Casanova added there may be a very good reason the wreck wasn't
reported... as it could have been a drug-smuggling plane.
Schoeffler said the wreckage appeared to be from a white Cessna
180 floatplane, though he wasn't able to identify a registration
number or other identifying characteristics due to the degree of
damage, and the fact most of the plane is mired in the swamp.
"It would have never been seen, but I was rabbit hunting and
walking through the bushes," he said, adding he did not see any
obvious sign of human remains in the area.
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