Hendry County First Responders arrived on scene to find a twin engine Piper Aerostar 600 crashed, approximately 40 yards from the Good Shepard Episcopal Church on Collingwood Parkway in Port LaBelle.
Two individuals were found aboard the plane, one later found to be deceased. The other person was transported for medical care.
The LaBelle Municipal Airport is about 3 miles southwest of the crash site. On the airport is Mullen's Aviation, LLC, a company owned by James J. Mullen, specializing in Piper Aerostar maintenance. The company received a $26,250 government sponsored Payroll Protection loan last year to protect three jobs.
The crashed plane was registered in Canada. James Mullen, 63 was reportedly the injured person in the aircraft.
According to the FAA Pilot Registry James Jonathan Mullen has a current Commercial Pilot Certificate.
It is unknown at this time the cause of the crash and the FAA has been notified and will be responding to the scene.
It is unknown at this time the cause of the crash and the FAA has been notified and will be responding to the scene.
Traffic was being rerouted east down SR80 to Birchwood Parkway to travel to homes in the Port LaBelle Unit 4 subdivision adjacent to the church.
UPDATE: Government investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board started looking at the crash scene Friday morning. It appears the plane clipped a tree on the southeast corner of the church property and then flying westerly, crashed into a clump of trees at the church's memorial garden.
Unrelated to the crash, a Piper Aerostar 601, one of several planes owned by Mullen was in Nassau, the Bahama Islands today having flown from LaBelle earlier in the week.
The last time an aviation death occurred in LaBelle was in April 2018 when a glider pilot crashed at the airport while being towed, after losing control of the glider, according to the NTSB final report.
UPDATE: Michael Stockton, 67 from Almonte, Ontario, Canada was the victim in the crash as announced Friday afternoon. The 1973 Aerostar aircraft was owned by Stockton who bought it in September 2019 after the Canadian Certificate of Registration had been cancelled in August 1994. He also owned a second smaller plane.
How is a loan to keep a business afloat relvant, at this time, to an airplane crash?
ReplyDeleteLaBelle Municipal Airport is a small airport with little business, anything to promote commerce there including small business loans to on field businesses from government programs will help the airport to flourish.
DeletePlease allow this family to grieve in peace ❤️
ReplyDeleteI’m just going to say- Shame on the Pastor for his insensitive remarks broadcasted this evening. Shame on you. Think about how this family is feeling right now.
ReplyDeleteInteresting read, more interesting was what seemed to be an accusation that the only survivor of the crash has left the country in a company plane. A simple check of the interweb shows that the Aerostar 601P is not registered to a company but to an individual, the survivor, and letting my fingers continue with the search shows that the airplane left LaBelle on the 1st of May, a full 5 days prior to the accident, for the Bahamas and has yet to return to the States but making multiple flights a day continuing into today the 12th of May. Seems an edit may need to be made as that small sentence seems to insinuate a lot with poor research or explanation.
ReplyDelete