Yankees pitcher among two killed; no mayday call was received
NEW YORK - Investigators were on the scene Thursday trying to determine why a four-seat, single-engine plane owned by Yankees baseball pitcher Cory Lidle crashed into a condominium tower on Manhattan's Upper East Side, killing Lidle and a second person who has yet to be identified.
A New York police spokesman said the crash was being investigated as an accident and that while police could not rule out suicide, there was nothing to suggest that. The investigation was being led by the National Transportation Safety Board.
The crash occurred in overcast weather and air traffic controllers received no mayday call.
A passport belonging to Lidle, an avid pilot who got his flying license after last year's offseason, was reportedly found on the street below the crash site.
The second victim was presumed to be Lidle’s flight instructor, but officials had yet to confirm that. It was not known who was at the controls.
Chute not used
The plane was a Cirrus SR20 — an aircraft equipped with a parachute designed to let it float to earth in case of a mishap. But there was no sign the chute was used.
FAA spokeswoman Diane Spitaliere said the plane was apparently not in contact with air traffic controllers; pilots flying small planes by sight are not required to be in contact.
Earlier reports had cited four bodies found; the city’s medical examiner’s office later confirmed only two people had died.
The FBI and the Homeland Security Department said there was no evidence it was a terrorist attack. “The initial indication is that there is a terrible accident,” Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said. Nevertheless, fighter jets were sent aloft over U.S. cities as a precaution, the Pentagon said.
The plane came through a hazy, cloudy sky and hit the 20th floor of The Belaire — a red-brick tower overlooking the East River, about five miles from the World Trade Center — with a loud bang, touching off a raging fire that cast a pillar of black smoke over the city and sent flames shooting from four windows on two adjoining floors.
"This is a terrible and shocking tragedy that has stunned the entire Yankees organization. I offer my deepest condolences and prayers to his wife Melanie, and son Christopher, on their enormous loss," Yankees owner George Steinbrenner said in a statement.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a news conference Wednesday that the plane left from Teterboro Airport in New Jersey at 2:20 p.m. The airport is 12 miles from midtown Manhattan.
Bloomberg said the city’s response to the accident was “massive and quick and coordinated.”
Residents escape
Two residents of the building barely escaped with their lives from an adjoining apartment after the plane exploded on contact, sending thick black smoke above the city skyline as a four-alarm fire raged high above 72nd Street.
Large crowds gathered in the street in the largely wealthy New York neighborhood, with many people in tears and some trying to reach loved ones by cell phone.
“I was worried the building would explode, so I got out of there fast,” said Lori Claymont, who fled an adjoining building in sweatpants.
Young May Cha, a 23-year-old Cornell University medical student, said she was walking back from the grocery store down 72nd Street when she saw an object out of the corner of her eye.
“I just saw something come across the sky and crash into that building,” she said. Cha said there appeared to be smoke coming from behind the aircraft, and “it looked like it was flying erratically for the short time that I saw it.”
“The explosion was very small. I was not threatened for my life,” she added.
Lidle, 34, had repeatedly assured reporters in recent months that flying was safe and that the Yankees — who lost catcher Thurman Munson in the 1979 crash of a plane he was piloting — had no reason to worry.
“The flying?” Lidle told The Philadelphia Inquirer this summer. “I’m not worried about it. I’m safe up there. I feel very comfortable with my abilities flying an airplane.”
Ex-safety official surprised
Former NTSB director Jim Hall said in a telephone interview he doesn’t understand how a plane could get so close to a New York City building after Sept. 11.
“We’re under a high alert and you would assume that if something like this happened, people would have known about it before it occurred, not after,” Hall said.
Mystery writer Carol Higgins Clark, daughter of author Mary Higgins Clark, lives on the 38th floor and was coming home in a cab when she saw the smoke. “Thank goodness I wasn’t at my apartment writing at the time,” she said. She described the building’s residents as a mix of actors, doctors, lawyers and writers, and people with second homes.
Sgt. Claudette Hutchinson, a spokeswoman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command, said fighter jets had scrambled in various cities once the cras
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