As I said, "If so..."
The state police, however, believe that the crash WAS intentional.
Pilot, daughter die in crash
By DIANA WIRES,
dwires@tmnews.com BEDFORD — Police said this evening that the fatal plane crash at Virgil I. Grissom Municipal Airport was intentional.
The preliminary investigation indicates the crash was deliberate, said Indiana State Police spokesman 1st Sgt. Dave Bursten.
Killed in this morning's crash were Eric Johnson, 47, of Bedford, and his daughter Emily Johnson, 8. Their deaths were confirmed by Lawrence County Coroner John Sherrill, who said they died from multiple blunt-force trauma suffered in the crash.
The plane slammed into into the home of Vivian Pace, Johnson’s former mother in-law.
"The reason the investigation has taken this direction," Bursten said in a prepared statement, "is based on information provided by witnesses of the crash, the direction the aircraft was traveling in relation to the airport and the fact the plane crashed into the home of Eric Johnson's former mother-in-law."
The formal cause will not be determined until the National Transportation Safety Board completes its investigation, which could take months.
http://www.tmnews.com/
March 5, 2007, 6:13PM
Pilot crashes into in-laws' house
The Associated Press
BEDFORD, Ind. — A pilot and his 8-year-old daughter were killed Monday when their small plane crashed into an in-laws' house near a southern Indiana airport, authorities said.
Indiana State Police spokesman 1st Sgt. Dave Bursten said a preliminary crash investigation leads "us to believe that this was an intentional act."
The crash killed Eric Johnson, 47, of Connersville, and his daughter Emily, he said. The plane crashed into the residence of one of Johnson's in-laws, Vivian Pace, Bursten said.
Authorities will not know for sure until the National Transportation Safety Board completes its investigation, which could take up to a year, Bursten said.
Earlier, Pace told The Times-Mail newspaper that she was in the living room of her one-story home when the plane struck the side of the building. She said everything fell off the walls.
She said she had heard a plane making a "horrible noise" before the crash.
The 11 a.m. crash happened near Virgil I. Grissom Municipal Airport, about 20 miles south of Bloomington and where the plane had been leased, state police Cpl. Eric Dunn said.
Witnesses said the plane appeared to be trying to land when it veered sharply and went out of sight, The Times-Mail reported on its Web site.
There were no reports of injuries on the ground, though the impact left much of the plane lodged inside the house.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/nation/4604267.html #7, I don't know how you missed the part about an estranged husband crashing a plane into his mother in law's house, but it was intentional. My best friend just called me and told me the wife was one of her bridesmaids. The husband called Beth (the wife) and told her what he was going to do, before he did it. Emily was her only child and she was begging her mother to come and get her and Beth of course could not. His own child. I'm struggling with horror and anger over this right now.
Dad: 'You're not going to get her'
(http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/285611,CST-NWS-plane07.article)
March 7, 2007
BY TOM DAVIES
BEDFORD, Ind. -- ''I've got her, and you're not going to get her.''
Beth Johnson heard those words from her ex-husband Monday, shortly before he crashed his rented single-engine plane into his former mother-in-law's southern Indiana home, killing himself and the couple's 8-year-old daughter.
The mother-in-law, Vivian Pace, described the cell phone call Tuesday as investigators tried to determine why student pilot Eric Johnson strapped his daughter into the plane's passenger seat and apparently crashed the plane deliberately into the one-story house.
Pace said she has no doubt that the crash was intentional because Johnson had been harassing his ex-wife for months, including buying a house three doors down from hers.
Took girl to Cancun
''That was the only way he could hurt Beth,'' she said. ''That was the only way he could get to her.''
In the cell phone call, Pace said, her daughter could hear the child in the background saying, 'Mommy, come get me, come get me.'''
Police were treating the crash as a suicide and homicide. State Police Sgt. Dave Bursten said investigators had yet to find any notes indicating Johnson's intentions, but the fact that the house was his ex-wife's mother's home raised serious questions.
''All of those things together lead us in the direction that this was done intentionally,'' Bursten said.
Eric Johnson, a property manager for the state Department of Natural Resources, had recently taken the girl to Cancun for vacation.
Emily ''was to spend the weekend with dad, and dad was supposed to bring her to school Monday morning,'' Bedford Police Maj. Dennis Parsley said.
Johnson obtained his pilot's license in November, the same month the couple divorced after 12 years.