Police: Plane crash was suicide-homicide

[Star Man]

Police: Plane crash was suicide-homicide
Pilot reportedly told ex-wife she wouldn't see daughter again

The Associated Press
Updated: 2:20 p.m. ET March 6, 2007

BEDFORD, Ind. - The man whose small plane slammed into his former mother-in-law’s house, killing him and his 8-year-old daughter, had told his ex-wife before the crash he had the girl “and you’re not going to get her,” the mother-in-law said Tuesday.

Eric Johnson, a student pilot who had soloed before, strapped daughter Emily into the passenger seat of a leased, single-engine Cessna on Monday morning. Less than two hours later, officials said, the plane smashed into the home of Vivian Pace, the girl’s grandmother.

Pace told reporters outside her damaged home Tuesday that Johnson called her daughter, Beth Johnson, by cell phone shortly before the crash.

He told his ex-wife: “I’ve got her, and you’re not going to get her,” she said.

Pace, who was home but wasn’t injured, said she believed the crash was deliberate.

“That was the only way he could hurt Beth. That was the only way he could get to her,” she said.

Andrew Todd Fox of the National Transportation Safety Board declined to say if Johnson, 47, said anything over the plane’s radio before the crash. The airport has no controller on duty, so no recording was available of any communication, he said.

The plane had already crashed but the occupants hadn’t been identified when Beth Johnson arrived at the Bedford Police Department to file a missing person report because her daughter hadn’t arrived at school that morning after spending the weekend with her father, police Maj. Dennis Parsley said Tuesday.

State and Bedford police were treating the case as a suicide and homicide, State Police 1st Sgt. Dave Bursten said. He said they had yet to find any notes indicating Johnson’s intentions with the flight, but the fact that the house was his ex-wife’s mother’s home raised serious questions.

“All of those things together lead us in the direction that this was done intentionally,” Bursten said Tuesday.

The couple had divorced in November after 12 years of marriage, Pace said.

Fox said Tuesday that investigators were looking at whether the plane was functioning properly and hoped to have a preliminary report within a week.

Bedford is about 20 miles south of Bloomington in southern Indiana.

At Parkview Primary School in Bedford, where Emily was a first-grader, counselors were called in to help the students, Principal Sari Wood said Tuesday.

“We’re all grieving over this,” Wood said. She described Emily as a “dear little girl” who “got a kick out of things and enjoyed life.”

“She just was one of those really friendly, really open little kids,” Wood said.



URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17468745/?GT1=9145

[KaiGywer]

That's just sad

[Willowdared]

It's really a shame that you can't kill people twice.

[Just KC]

Just some freaky shit.
Whacked out people!!

[BabyGirl]

That was the most selfish, uncaring thing I've ever seen. God, kill your your own child to get back at your wife? Sick bastard.

[Star Man]

Well, I figure he's smoking a big fat turd in hell right about now for his stupid ass behavior......

[conalabu]

I can understand offing himself. I can maybe even get his mother-in-law. But his kid? That is a line no person should ever cross.

[Pedro56]

That was screwed up, and just to show you how f'ed up the news is here in the city of Large Payoffs, the cover was that ghetto rat Hudson with her Oscar at Ghetto Dunbar High. Followed by more bs for her, then that little weasel of a Mayor making it "officially Jennifer Hudson Day in Chicago" who cares. I care more about my belly lint than I do celebrities. There is actually news out there and I have to read about. It is a shame that he would take the life of his daughter like that. Sometimes I just sit back and look and these things and ask "Why?"