A Salisbury man flying home Friday crashed his plane in a soybean field near a middle
school in South Carolina.Steven
Max Sifford, 36, of Route 3, owns Sifford’s Exxon Servicenter & Heating Oil in
Rockwell. Sifford was flown to Palmetto Richland Memorial Hospital in nearby Columbia. He
was in serious condition this morning with a head injury, but could talk.
Sifford, who has flown for about
three years, had taken his 1954 Piper Tripacer to Thomson, a small town in southern
Georgia. Sifford was having the plane worked on there because the cockpit would fill with
smoke from the engine. That’s what happened again during his return, said Sherry
Johnson, who works for Sifford and has talked with his family.
“He was trying to bring home
his airplane that was being worked on down in Georgia,” Johnson said.
“Evidently, it wasn’t fixed ... They found smoke in the cockpit.”
The plane nose-dived in Newberry,
S.C., barely missing a set of power lines and striking ground just 3,000 feet from
Newberry Middle School. No children were at the school because of a teacher work day, Sgt.
Jim Murray with the Newberry County Sheriff’s Department said.
A friend of Sifford’s, Kurt
Mullis of Rockwell, had been flying in another plane behind Sifford. Reached this morning,
Mullis said smoke had entered the cockpit of Sifford’s plane three weeks ago during a
trip to Florida.
Friday, Sifford made a 90-degree
turn and was trying to land at a nearby airport. Mullis, who tried to radio Sifford just
before the crash, saw the crash and said Sifford had passed out from smoke.
“He remembers missing the
power lines. That’s when he passed out,” Mullis said. “He’s going to
be all right.”
Rescue workers had to cut away
part of the plane to get Sifford out, Johnson said. “He’s well known and well
loved,” she said.
No one on the ground was hurt. The
Federal Aviation Administration in Atlanta sent an investigator to the site, Murray said. |
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