Published: November 06, 2006 12:49 pm            

Crash kills pilot

Plane lands in median of highway

Darrell Snyder and Dana Bennett saw a single-engine plane circling Highway 52 Monday afternoon just minutes before it crashed into a median just east of Highway 286, killing an Illinois man.

“It looked like he was going to land in the road,” Snyder, of Dalton, said. “He was above the trees when we first saw him.”

Just a few seconds later, the plane dove into the ground, mangling the cockpit and spilling fuel into the westbound lanes of the highway.

Charlie Laing, 52, of Sycamore, Ill., died in the crash, according to Whitfield County Coroner Bobbie Dixon. Laing was flying from DeKalb, Ill., to Brooksville, Fla., said Kathleen Bergen of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The plane did not hit any cars, and there were no passengers.

Laing, a native of Chicago who had moved to DeKalb to attend Northern Illinois University, owned apartment complexes around DeKalb and Sycamore, according to the Daily Chronicle newspaper in DeKalb.

Bennett, a certified nursing assistant from Dalton, tried to help Laing after the crash but “he was gone,” she said.

Katie Brooker, who lives just a few yards from the crash site, heard a big “kaboom,” she said.

“I thought it was a car,” Brooker said. “As soon as I got to my driveway the ambulance and fire trucks were pulling up.”

Emergency officials were on their way to the Dalton Municipal Airport after receiving a call from Whitfield County 911 at 12:27 p.m. that a plane was going to attempt an emergency landing due to engine problems, a spokesman for 911 said. The plane crashed at 12:36 p.m., the spokesman said.

Officials from the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board arrived at the crash site late Monday afternoon to investigate.

The plane was an experimental plane, which is built from a kit, Bergen said. The planes are regulated by the FAA, she said.

The plane was not registered to Laing.