When Mary Doktor heard the sound of an airplane clearly in distress passing over her house on Boyce Road yesterday just before noon, she looked up and saw a small plane passing overhead.
She knew it was too low to the ground and the engine was sputtering, making a strange "winding" sound.
"I knew it was going down and I thought, 'Thank God, he's not hitting my house,' " Doktor said. "That's what I thought. It was scary ... . Poor guy."
The plane, she said, was still relevantly level with the ground and the nose was not pointed down, she said.
She ran into her house to call 9-1-1 and then heard a boom.
"I ran back out and jumped in my car," she said. "I was scared at that point that somebody else's house was hit. I never even called 9-1-1."
The crash site was about a mile into the woods from Boyce Road. It wasn't possible for Doktor to get to the crash site but she could smell fuel in the air. There was no fireball, just a small plume of smoke rising in the air.
Steve Barnes, of Cellino and Barnes, and his niece Elizabeth Barnes apparently died in the crash, though the Sheriff's Office has not yet officially released the names of the victims.
Barnes was flying a 2009 SOCATA 700N, commonly referred to by aviators as a TBM-850, with the tail number N965DM, from Manchester, N.H., to Buffalo. Barnes had been in radio contact with Boston Center but apparently lost radio contact with air controllers there and a short time later made contact with air traffic control in Buffalo.
Once contact was established, a controller informed him to maintain 8,000 feet and asked him if everything is fine. "Yes, sir," Barnes responded. "Everything is fine."
A couple of minutes later, radar shows his plan veering north. The air traffic controller says, "965 Delta Mike, stop your descent, level your wings, maintain your altitude."
Twice more the controller tells Barnes to stop his descent. There is no response.
"965 Delta Mike, how do you hear?" The controller asks.
Within seconds, the plane disappears from radar.
"Radar contact loss," the controller says.
This afternoon, Sheriff William Sheron there was a change in plans for investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board to visit the crash site. The FAA is conducting the on-site investigation. The debris will be shipped to Nashville where it will be examined by the NTSB and the manufacturer.
TOP Photo: Genesee County Emergency Management vehicles parked this morning on land off of Route 33 near the crash site in Corfu.
