HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. -- Emergency crews spent Tuesday morning removing a plane from the beach near Palmetto Dunes that made an unexpected landing Monday evening.
The pilot and passenger inside the plane escaped without injury, but the plane struck and killed 38-year-old Robert Gary Jones of Woodstock, Georgia.
Jones was in Hilton Head on business. He was employed by the pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline.
Authorities say Jones was wearing his iPod and jogging along the beach when the plane struck him.
Since the plane had lost power from a broken propeller, its landing was quiet and officials suspect Jones didn't hear a thing.
Lee-Cassie Robinson can hardly believe what she saw outside her hotel balcony monday afternoon.
“The plane picked back up and maybe 200-300 yards further down the beach the tires were down and it hit a person in a red shirt in the upper body and he fell on the ground,” Robinson recalls.
She says all she could do was hope.
“I kept wanting that person to get up,” she says. “I kept seeing some people walk over and then I thought for sure he would just stand back up and brush himself off."
The pilot's friend told reporters Edward Smith built that plane himself, and it was a solid ten on a ten-scale; the best built plane he'd ever seen.
The landing is under investigation by the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board.
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