Tales from the Morgue: A jet crashes in Tucson

Jet kills 1, spares kids

Fiery debris spews over school area

By DIANE JOHNSEN
The Arizona Daily Star

An Air Force jet fighter crashed in a street just south of the University of Arizona shortly after noon yesterday, killing one person but narrowly missing students on the playground at Mansfeld Junior High School.

The plane's pilot suffered only a scraped ankle after he ejected 200 feet over the UA campus, but the aircraft ignited a wall of flames several stories high as it hit on one wing and skidded along North Highland Avenue south of East Sixth Street. Six persons were injured, one very critically.

After compression in his engines failed, the pilot aimed the plane for a UA football practice field just east of Highland, but instead it plummeted onto the street, showering cars in the area with burning fuel and debris.

Engines on his plane, an A-7D Corsair II, stalled eight miles north of the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base runway for which he was headed, said Brig. Gen. Robert S. Kelley, commander of the base.

Harry Brannon was sitting outside his home at ---- E. Silver St., when he heard a popping sound from the plane as it passed over North Sixth Avenue and East Grant Road, then the engines died.

"I thought he was turning on his afterburners to slow him down, but then he went to coasting," he said.

The crash raised anew questions of the safety of D-M flight paths over the university. Rep. Morris K. Udall, D-Ariz., called a meeting of city, county and Air Force officials for 9 a.m. today in the City Council chamgers to discuss the incident.

The 40 A-7Ds at the base will not be grounded and will be flown normally pending the investigation and a review of the planes' maintenance history, said Maj. Myron Donald, assistant public relations officer at the base.

A long string of Air Force jet flights over the UA continued unbroken after the crash. Students cramming the sidewalks near the site had to shout on occasion to make themselves heard above the planes' roar.

The woman who died in the crash and the most seriously injured victim were in a compact car engulfed in flames from the plane. They have been identified as sisters, but hospital officials were not sure last night which had died. An imprint of the dead woman's teeth was taken, and positive identification was expected today.

Believed to have been burned to death was Leticia Felix Humphrey, 22, of ---- N. Columbus Blvd. Her sister is Clarissa Felix, of ---- E. Eighth St. The woman believed to be Clarissa was in extremely critical condition in University Hospital last night with third-degree burns over 90 percent of her body.

Alice Minder, 48, of --- N. Vine Ave., and her 18-year-old daughter, Joan, were in stable condition at St. Mary's Hospital after their moving car was ignited by debris from the plane several feet farther south on Highland.

Another daughter, Erin, 12, was walking nearby at the time and suffered cuts while pulling her older sister, crippled by a birth defect, from the car. Erin was treated at University Hospital and released.

In stable condition at University Hospital was Richard Flagg, 56, address unknown, who apparently was walking in the area when he was knocked unconscious by the force of the crash.

Mansfeld seventh-grader Christopher Duarte, 12, was released from University Hospital after being trreated for bruises he received when he was thrown to the ground by the concussion.

The crash burned four unoccupied cars on Highland, officials said.

Though the plane is equipped to carry 20,000 pounds of weapons, it was unarmed.

The plane's pilot, Capt. Fredrick L. Ashler, 28, ejected as the plane soared powerless over the UA campus. Seen by scores of students from high-rise classroom windows, he parachuted down to land on a grassy area outside campus police headquarters at East Fifth Street and Highland.

Students lounging in the sun during the noon hour on the UA mall heard an explosion overhead as Ashler ejected, then rushed en masse the few blocks south the where his plane came to rest at about 12:16 p.m.

"Everybody was just looking at it — and it was like 'Oh, my God.' Then everybody was running over there," said UA student Frank Hunt, 23, from Tucson.

UA sophomore Danny Taylor, 21, said the plane hit the ground at an angle of 45-60 degrees. "I was walking back to my dorm. There was a loud explosion first when the pilot ejected, and then the plane crashed. It was the loudest thing I've ever heard."

Kelley said Ashler, an instructor pilot with more than 1,000 flying hours and 764 in the A-7D, had intended to set the plane down on the practice field. But witnesses said that after he ejected, the aircraft suddenly veered eastward to its right and slammed into the street between the field and the school. The plane was going about 200 mph on impact, Kelley said.

He said a compression failure caused the plane's engines to stop, and praised Ashler for doing all he could to land the plane safely. Witnesses at the UA agreed.

"He laid it down really nice," said Mario Zappia, 22, from Oracle. "He didn't know he was going to hit anybody. The cars turned onto the street after he had chosen it."

An investigation into the cause of the crash will be conducted by the Air Force. The Federal Aviation Administration will not be involved, said Carl Swanson, FAA representative here, because a military craft was involved.

Ashler, who had been assigned to the 357th Tactical Fighter Training Squadron here for about five months, was picked up by Air Force medics within minutes after he parachuted to safety. He was hospitalized overnight for observation, and unavailable for comment.

The fiery crash drew at least 150 law-enforcement officers, according to Police Capt. Leonard Dietch. It took 35 firefighters in four engine companies and two ladder trucks to quell the flames with foam, officials said.

A crowd of thousands formed around the crash site within minutes, and several hundred remained behind police barricades as long as two hours later. Police arrested Lawrence Dunn, 33, of --- E. University Blvd., and charged him with disorderly conduct when he refused to leave the scene, they said.

Shortly before 2 p.m., a parade of D-M vehicles, including two dump trucks, a bulldozer and a long flatbed truck, arrived escorted by motorcycle police to being cleaning up the plane's debris. They finished the job by 5:30 p.m.

Police officials doubted that Highland would be reopened immediately, however, because of deep ruts the plane scraped into the asphalt. The road was scorched for several hundred feet, beginning about half a block south of Sixth where the plane first hit.

The plane knocked down a telephone cable, and service was cut off to 200 customers between East Sixth and Seventh streets from North Mountain Avenue to North Cherry Avenue, said Mountain Bell spokesman Rick Hays. He said service should be restored by 3 a.m. today. A power outage in the area lasted about 45 minutes.

Udall said he hoped the meeting this morning would help clear and "perhaps reassure some people" about flight safety in the future.

"As long as I've been in Tucson, there've been arguments about Davis-Monthan, its proximity and flight patterns. But I think D-M has done a pretty good job with the least possible danger to the university and to the city."

UA President John P. Schaefer, who was out of the state yesterday, issued a statement calling for talks between community leaders and Davis-Monthan officials to work out ways to "minimize danger to the public." He had not yet been notified about today's meeting, but spokesman Hugh Harelson said the university would be sure to have a representative at the session.

City Councilman Tom Volgy, a UA political science professor who saw the plane go down, said he and a Udall aide had talked to D-M officials three or four weeks ago about the danger and noise caused by the Air Force landing patterns over the campus.

The safety of D-M planes over the city has been a persistent controversy in Tucson. The issue has been a sleeping one, however, since a furor over the crash of an F-4D jet into an eastside supermarket that killed four persons in 1967.

"We don't like to crash airplanes," said Kelley yesterday. "We're proud of the fact that we've had a very good accident record."

It came for me, and I hit the dirt

(Bill Murray, a 19-year-old journalism major in his junior year at the University of Arizona, stepped into his backyard at --- N. Highland Ave. just moments before the crash that scattered chunks of aircraft debris almost to the edge of his yard. Here is his firsthand account.)

By BILL MURRAY
Special to The Arizona Daily Star

"Holy #@%*&!" I thought when I walked into my back yard yesterday and saw a military jet too low to not be in trouble.

I've seen a lot of jets fly over my house, and I just knew something was wrong.

The jet seemed to be straining to stay in the air. I watched while it passed over the university in slight rolling motion and at an uncommon tilt, like in the movies when a plane comes in for a landing on an aircraft carrier, nose up.

As I stood looking at this jet, similar to those that fly over daily, it was coming closer and closer to me. I knew something was wrong, but it wasn't until I heard to pop of the pilot ejecting and actually saw the canopy rise and fall off to one side of the het that I really became scared.

At this point I realized, "Hey, I better get out of here — this thing is going down!"

I didn't run immediately. I knew I had to. It wasn't because I was frozen — I guess if was disbelief. The jet seemed to be heading right toward me.

Then the jet made a nosedive just after it had passed Wildcat Stadium a block from my house. I dove to the ground expecting the worst.

When I hit the ground I heard a loud explosion, but all I could see was the telephone wires jiggling and swaying from side to side.

I thought the jet would hit close enough to do me harm, but it didn't, thank God.

I lay on the ground for what I thought was long enough to feel safe — just until I heard the debris stop falling. Then I jumped up and rounded the corner of my house. My neighbor was screaming.

I was so shaken when I got out to the street my legs were like rubber. All I could see was thick clouds of black smoke and a van with one of the wings of the aircraft leaning against it engulfed in flames.

People came running from everywhere. I yelled at them not to get close to the wreckage — I thought it would explode again.

From where I stood, a few yards from the burning van, I couldn't tell if anyone was hurt or trapped. All I could see were flames, smoke and debris scattered over the street and yards in my neighborhood.

The flames were spreading to a university parking lot. I yelled again at people running toward the crash. I thought they were crazy. The only thing anybody could do to help, I thought, was not to get in the way.

My neighbors and I went back to our homes and waited for the fire and emergency vehicles that arrived very shortly after the crash.

Now I think back to all the aircraft that have flown over my house. It's still hard to believe one was coming right for me.

Schoolchildren ran, screamed and wept — but all were safe

By SHERRY STERN
The Arizona Daily Star

At 12:15, they were seventh and eighth graders at Mansfeld Junior High School heading for the snack bar.

A minute later they were witnesses to an airplane crash, witnesses who mistakenly thought they had seen one of their classmates engulfed in flames and another running to the nurse's office in pain.

"Sure I saw it," said one seventh-grade girl. "I cried for about half an hour."

Other girls cried; boys screamed; everyone ran, and teachers yelled for order at the school, which at the northwest corner of Highland Avenue and Seventh Street is just 25 feet from the crash site. Yet damage to the school was minor — part of a fence was knocked down, and a small section of the playground was burned.

Inside the two-story school, a boom was heard, the building shook, lights flickered and windows rattled. And everyone ran outside.

The 15 to 30 kids already on the playground were immediately joined by most of the school's other 330 pupils. More crying, yelling, running and screaming — and everyone wanted to see what happened.

"It was turmoil. It was turmoil," said Patti Lindy, a teacher. "The kids will be wild. They're so emotional at this age. We'll just try and keep them as calm as we can."

They weren't calm, but they were soon experts on the crash.

Gergory DeConcini, a 12-year-old seventh-grader, was on the playground when the crash happened. He described the scene: "It was a fighter. He was about 10 feet from the roof of the school. He ejected. We got real scared and we started running here. I pulled the fire alarm."

Dennis Phillips, a seventh-grader, said, "First of all there was a noise like a sonic boom. They just looked up and everybody ran out in front. They didn't know what to think."

Police arrived to keep the children on the west end of the playground. Some also tried to get them out of the school to the north side of Sixth Street. A few children were sent to the school's other playground across Seventh Street.

Top Tucson Unified School District officials, including acting Superintendent Florence Reynolds, arrived, offering to help. The school's telephone lines were out, so Reynolds offered to set up a communications system. (Meanwhile district offices received calls continuously for three hours after from people inquiring about the children.)

Teachers finally got almost everyone into the cafeteria, which police decided was a safe area and which the kids found was a place to swap stories.

Rumors were rampant.

One seventh-grader said he saw someone walking near the corner of Highland and seventh.

"She got oil on her. She fell down. She got up. She started walking. It ignited. She burst into flames. She started running."

The student said a man grabbed her and rolled her in the ground to put out the flames.

Kids talked about a second pilot — a woman — on the plane (there wasn't one). They said — falsely — that their classmate, Erin Minder, suffered first degree burns and that seventh-grader Christopher Duarte was in shock.

A few kids finished their hamburgers or sipped from milk cartons. About 90 percent of them were standing, some were still crying.

Principal Maynard Farr finally got them seated and quiet. He calmly told them: "We are going to stay in here for a while . . . until it is safe to leave. I am concerned about the safety of every boy and girl. I am asking for your cooperation.

"This is a very bad thing that happened. We need your help . . . We don't want you running around in the street or near the wreckage or between school and home. You are safe here."

If their parents came, the children could go home. Otherwise they were to stay in the cafeteria, Farr told them.

Most stayed and almost all talked about the crash.

After about an hour in the cafeteria officials decided it was safe to send kids back to class, where they stayed until school got out at 3 p.m.

During the crash hysteria, teacher Alexandria Dodds remembered a conversation in the teacher's lounge three weeks ago.

They argued about the danger of the Air Force planes flying over the city and the school.

Dodds remembers saying, "It will take a tragedy before they do something about it."

'Oh, God!' youth gasped as jet whistled 25 feet overhead

By KEITH ROSEMBLUM
The Arizona Daily Star

"All of a sudden it was dark. It was the middle of the day — and then out of nowhere comes this tremendous shadow. It was probably four lanes wide.

"And then it passes by, almost before I have a chance to think. There's an incredible explosion and flames that are high, very high.

"It didn't make sense. I watched it all, and I understood that it was a plane, but it still didn't register — a crash.

"I was shocked, stunned," said Brad Gillman, a University of Arizona freshman.

Gillman, stopped at the intersection of Sixth Street and Highland Avenue, was driving back to his room in Apache Dormitory.

A passenger in Gillman's car, UA freshman Mike Weinstein, caught the first glimpse. "Oh, my God!" he gasped. The body of the A-7D Corsair Jet was approximately 25 feet above the automobile. Forty yards in front of them, the plane hit the pavement.

"I didn't know what to do," Gillman said. "Should I back up? Pull over? Go help out? Everything happened quickly. One minute it seemed no one was around, and the next moment the streets were streaming with people.

"I went back to the dorm. It hadn't seemed real at the time, now it did. I was nervous, shaking, pacing. I called home (Olympia Fields, Ill.) and asked my sister if she had heard about the crash. She had.

"I told her if the plane had been 20 feet lower before it crashed I wouldn't be alive."

At home for the lunch hour, 21-year-old Joe Ortez heard a sound that "didn't sound like the other planes." He rushed to the door and saw the plane hit the ground.

"I took my wife and 2-month-old baby across the street to safety and then I rushed to the scene," he said. "There were three cars burning, and the street was filled with smoke and fire. Pieces of the plane were burning."

Nearby, at Mansfeld Junior High School, Randy Parsonage and several classmates watched from a different angle.

"It hit a car, bounced, and then rolled down the street in flames," he said. "There was a long streak of fire and then someone ran into the school and pulled the fire alarm."

At the reception desk of the Santa Cruz and Apache dormitories, senior Dan Cotto-Thorner, operating the dormitory switchboard, heard a "weird sound" and saw the plane swerving in midair.

"My initial thought was that the plane would swerve right into the dorm; then after another swerve, I thought it was headed for the (Mansfeld) junior high. When it hit, we all rushed out. First I thought there was debris falling from the sky, but then I realized it was the pilot parachuting," he said.

A resident of Apache, who requested anonymity, said he was the first person to arrive at the crash site. The student said in a phone interview that he had been playing softball when he heard a whistling noise and then saw the plane rapidly descending.

"I hopped over the maintenance fence and ran like hell for the cars that were on fire," the UA sophomore said. "I didn't have shoes on, so when I saw a woman, I told her to give me her shoes. I asked if she knew whether anyone had been hurt. She said she didn't think so. She was crying.

"I went over to a person lying in the street. She was burned beyond recognition. There was nothing I could do. There were five or six cars on fire and I looked around to help. I couldn't. The plane was gone. Except for a part of the wing, it had disintegrated."

Freshman Valerie Lim, a Tucsonan, said she could read numbers on the plane's fuselage as it sand past a window in the university Student Union. "We're lucky were were inside here," she said.

Among the students sitting outside on the UA mall was Jay Heater, a journalism major from New York.

"It's a reflex to look up in the sky when you hear a plane," he said, "and I followed this one. Then, almost simultaneously, I see a chair and a pilot eject from the plane, I hear an explosion, and see flames."

Heater said his first impulse was to run away from the scene, fearing an explosion. "But everyone else was running toward the scene and I followed," he said.

Rush to give aid at the scene makes unhurt nurse a 'victim'

By JOHN S. LONG
The Arizona Daily Star

When Janet Roxie Ireland walked into her house yesterday afternoon, her roommates almost fainted. When they recovered, they told her she looked good for someone who was 80 percent burned.

A case of mistaken identity had led to Ireland's being listed in critical condition at University Hospital as a result of yesterday's Air Force jet fighter crash.

"When I heard it, I was just relieved that I'm still here," said Ireland, who watched the plane crash and was one of the first people at the scene.

"I was coming home from class, and I looked up and heard an explosion and saw the plane come down and the upper part of it break up and crash in the street. Part of the plane hit the car, and pieces flew everywhere."

A registered nurse, Ireland said she raced down the street to see if she could help. She saw a man on the street who looked as if he were dead, and rolled him over and took his pulse.

"He was alive, and I stayed with him while someone else went over to the burning car and pulled a woman lying near it over by us. The car was in flames from the start, and no one could get near enough to it to pull the person in it out," said Ireland.

The woman had either been walking down the street or was thrown from the car, Ireland said, but was so badly burned that her sex could not be determined until much of her burning and smoldering clothing was cut off her. She was later tentatively identified as Clarissa Felix of ---- E. Eighth St.

A policeman then came by and told people to move away because of the possibility of live ammunition from the plane exploding.

"At the time, I didn't think of the consequences (of the ammunition). I was with a man who needed my care. What could I do but stay?" said Ireland.

The next thing she knew, ambulances were taking away the injured and, along with the burned woman, Ireland's purse which she had thrown haphazardly to one side nearby and was next to the woman. It wasn't until Ireland had left the crash site for home a block away that she realized she had lost it.

But at the hospital, the woman who had been burned was mistakenly identified as Ireland because Ireland's purse was with her, and early news reports of the crash listed the nurse as one of its victims.

After she realized her purse was missing, Ireland said, "I went back and asked a policeman what happened to it and was told it probably went with the ambulance. So I went and called Kino Hospital and said if they bring someone there and check the purse to ignore the blood type card I had; it was mine.

"I went to Kino a little later to pick up the purse, but they said it must have gone to St. Mary's, so I called there and was told no one had it. By then, I thought maybe someone had ripped it off or it was misplaced somewhere along the line," said the 26-year-old nurse and part-time university student, who finally discovered that her purse was in the emergency room of University Hospital.

He acted fast, pulling 2 from burning van

By JON KAMMAN
The Arizona Daily Star

"I didn't really think about it — I just did it."

What Joe Azua "just did" was quite possibly save the lives of a Tucson woman and her invalid daughter. Certainly, he spared them from worse burns than they did suffer.

They were in the wrong place at the wrong time when an Air Force jet plummeted to earth yesterday, instantly raining pieces of the aircraft and a wall of fire onto the back of their passenger van.

Azua's fate, though, was to be in a safer place mere paces from where their auto came to rest — and to have the presence of mind to act.

"I heard somebody screaming and knew I had to do something," said Azua, of --- N. Second St.

One moment, the 29-year-old filling-station attendant was sitting quietly in the living room of a friend's apartment at --- N. Highland Ave., minding her 3-month-old daughter while she was busy at a laundromat. The next few moments thrust him into heroism.

"I heard two explosions," Azua recalled, "and went to the window. There were flames all over the place.

"Then I heard screams, so I just ran out to the van and pulled two girls out. I didn't even stop to put my shoes on . . . I just ran," Azua said.

"There wasn't anybody else out there yet — it was only about five seconds after the explosion. The flames and smoke were so bad you couldn't see the other side of the street."

Azua first saw a woman in the back seat of the van apparently struggling to open the door. He yanked it open and, wrapping his arms under the woman's, pulled her to the street.

"I pulled her 15 or 20 feet and sat her down. She said, 'All of a sudden the can was just rolling (pushed down the street when hit from behind by a section of the aircraft) and we were on fire.'" The vehicle stopped alongf the curb of Highland about 25 yards from the apartment's back door.

"She got up and started going back to the van, and I told her to go into that white house over there," Azua said, pointing to a residence even closer to the conflagration than was the apartment of his friend, Susan Richardson, 22.

"I went back to see if anyone else was in the van and saw another person in the back seat — I think she had been lying on her back — so I pulled her out, too," Azua said. By that time, another girl came up and helped him get her out.

"There were crutches in the van, and she told me, 'I can't walk; I'm crippled,' so I carried her into the house.

"Both the them were burned around here," Azua said, motioning along the back and one side of his body.

Somehow Azua managed to save the two without being burned.

He said the two weeks of safety and rescue training he completed several years ago before going to work in a New Mexico uranium mine might have given him confidence to perform the rescue.

Azua was under the impression until late in the day that both women were college students, but he later learned that they are Alice Minder, 48, and her 18-year-old daughter, Joan, whose inability to walk stems from a birth defect.

The girl who helped rescue Joan was her sister, Erin, 12, who was approaching the vehicle on her way home to lunch from Mansfeld Junior High School. The family resides at --- N. Vine Ave.

The two burn victims were reported in stable condition last night at St. Mary's Hospital's burn center.

Just as he accepted the emergency without thought for himself, Azua returned to his everyday life a few hours later without fanfare.

He showed up for work at 3 p.m., about an hour late, at Baca's Union 76 Service, 695 W. St. Mary's Road. And he didn't tell his boss why.

12-year-old witness

Car came out of smoke with mother, sister in it

The school bell rang about 12:15 and 12-year-old Erin Minder started walking to her home at --- N. Vine Ave., for lunch. It was only about a block from school.

"I heard a big boom," she said later in the day. "I looked up and saw something fall. Then the plane crashed."

For the next few moments Erin stared in terrified fascination. "I was really scared," she said. She could not see anything in the smoke. Then something emerged.

"I saw a car come out of the smoke and stop. It was on fire."

It was the Minder family's green Chevrolet, and her mother and her sister were inside. As a man ran over to pull her mother out of the burning car, Erin too leaped into action, pulling her crippled sister out.

"I ran over and opened the door and grabbed her and put her on the pavement," she said.

Erin's mother, Alice Minder, had just picked up Joan, 18, at Tucson High School and was driving south on Highland Avenue. They probably would have seen Erin, picked her up, and driven home.

Somehow, Erin escaped getting burned, but she did have cuts and bruises. Her mother and her sister were at St. Mary's Hospital last night in stable condition.

Meanwhile, nine hours after the crash, the identities of the woman who died and the woman who was burned over 90 percent of her body remained in doubt. University Hospital officials said they know the two are sisters, but were not sure which one died.

Relatives of Leticia Humphrey and Clarissa Felix were unable to identify the woman believed to be Felix, who was in the intensive care unit with third-degree burns over 90 percent of her body.

An imprint of the teeth of the dead woman was taken so it could be compared with dental records.

A priest, a nun and about 40 friends of the family gathered in the emergency room to give the family moral support.

According to friends, the two women were born in Mexico and attended high school at Suffolk Hills Catholic High School here, and both were enrolled at the University of Arizona this semester.

Award due for staying with plane

By ALLEN CARRIER
and JOHN RAWLINSON
The Arizona Daily Star

U.S. Air Force Capt. Fredrick L. Ashler will be recommended for an award for his efforts to keep his jet fighter from striking a school and homes, Brig. Gen. Robert E. Kelley, commander of Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, said yesterday.

"He did a super job," Kelley said of the pilot's attempt to keep the plane from striking Mansfeld Junior High School and nearby homes.

Asked if he thought Ashler was a hero, the general said, "It's hard to say, but he did everything humanly possible."

Kelley said the pilot tried to aim the failing craft for a landing in an empty University of Ariznoa football practice field at East Seventh Street and Highland Avenue. The plane just missed it.

"He stayed with the aircraft longer than some might have thought possible," Kelley said. "We teach our pilots to do that."

Kelley said when a pilot bails out of a jet at 200 feet above the ground as Ashler did, "your chances of being alive are slim." Ashler suffered only a scraped ankle in the fall.

Ashler, the general said, tried everything he was supposed to try when the jet encountered an engine compression stall. Kelley said the pilot raised the flaps on the plane and the landing gear to gain more altitude and tried to glide to the D-M landing strip about four miles from the crash site, but he couldn't make it.

When the plane rolled over at 200 feet above the ground near the crash site, the controls were probably gone, the general said.

"He stayed with the aircraft until he had no further control of it." the general said.

From the time the jet developed engine trouble about eight miles from the landing strip, the pilot had only one minute to try to correct the situation, according to Kelley.

Kelley said last night that he didn't know what type of award Ashler would be recommended for, but said he felt he deserved some recognition for trying successfully to keep his jet from hitting the school and houses.

Kelley said U.S. Air Force lawyers were at the crash scene yesterday, providing government claim forms to the victims of the crash. He said the Air Force will offer immediate aid to the victims. "No question about it," he added.