CO-PILOT EXITS PLANE AND LANDS IN NORTH CAROLINA – FEDERAL OFFICIALS INVESTIGATING
MORRISVILLE, N.C. (WNCN) — New details have come out about the hours leading up to a plane’s emergency landing in North Carolina and the co-pilot’s mysterious mid-flight exit and fatal fall.
At around 3:20 p.m. Friday, a medium cargo plane made an emergency landing at Raleigh-Durham International Airport in North Carolina. The twin-engine CASA CN-212 Aviocar, made in Spain and registered to Colorado-based Spore LTD, landed on a runway and veered into the grass.
The plane initially had two people on board. First responders told Nexstar’s WNCN that one person onboard the plane was taken to Duke Hospital with minor injuries.
Shortly after the plane landed, local emergency units began searching for a co-pilot who either fell or jumped from the plane without a parachute while it was in the air.
Authorities were later flagged down by someone who heard a noise in their yard. The co-pilot, 23-year-old Charles Hew Crooks, was then found dead in the Sonoma Springs Neighborhood, roughly 30 miles south of the airport.
Flight tracking software shows the plane initially took off from Raeford, North Carolina, at 1:10 p.m. Friday. The plane circled around Raeford before heading toward Raleigh, a roughly 80-mile trip.
Before arriving in Raeford, flight tracking software shows the aircraft took off from the Rocky Mount/Wilson Airport, about 50 miles west of Raleigh, at 11:52 a.m. and landed at Raeford West Airport at 12:34 p.m.
