KANNAPOLIS — A pilot had used marijuana as recently as four hours before crashing his
plane into the bank of Kannapolis Lake last year, killing himself and one passenger, a
federal report released Friday indicates.An investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board gives few
other clues as to how the accident occurred but cites what witnesses reported.
Thirty-year-old Mark E. Crafts of
Melbourne, Fla., and 36-year-old Pamela M.Slack of Leesburg, Va., left an airport in
Savannah, Ga., at 2:43 p.m. on May 4, 1999. Crafts terminated radar service after
traveling 15 nautical miles southeast. That was the last time he would talk with air
traffic controllers, the report by the National Transportation Safety Board says.
Crafts landed his private Kitfox
airplane, equipped with floats, on Kannapolis Lake around 6 p.m. The plane took off about
40 minutes later.
The plane took off to the north,
flying 5 feet above the water in a “slow cruise,” the report says, citing
witnesses. The plane’s wings waved back and forth. When the plane reached Upper
Enochville Road, which crosses the lake on a narrow strip of land, the engine’s power
increased. The plane then rose sharply to about 100 feet above the water. After stalling
and spinning slightly to the left, it dove into land between the lake and Upper Enochville
Road.
A pathologist with the Chief
Medical Examiner’s Office in Chapel Hill said Crafts died of a blunt blow to the
head.
Crafts, a computer engineer, was
on his way to Washington for a six-month work assignment, his Florida neighbors said last
year. He had flown since 1996 and had spent 414 hours in the Kitfox, the report says.
An FAAlab determined Crafts had
not been drinking alcohol. But they did find traces of THC, the active ingredient in
marijuana, in his blood and urine, during an autopsy.
The Chief Medical Examiner’s
office said the level of THC found could mean Crafts ingested marijuana four or five hours
before he died. The time varies depending on a person’s body weight. The medical
examiner’s office also said controlled clinical studies have shown that marijuana
does not affect a person’s ability to drive an automobile.
Tim Monville, an investigator for
the National Transportation Safety Board, declined to speculate on whether marijuana
played a role in the crash. The board’s Washington, D.C., office will review the
report and could rule on that at a later date, he said. |
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