Witnesses to the aftermath of the small plane crash earlier this month at North Palm Beach County General Aviation Airport swam into the muddy lake, attempting to rescue the two men who were trapped inside and underwater, 911 calls released this week show.
Many minutes passed as a man at the scene of the crash described to a 911 operator and first responders how the Piper PA28 rolled off of one of the runways and into the water, becoming completely submerged, on the airport’s property. No one had surfaced. Only one of the plane’s wings that had been ripped off during the crash could be seen on top of the water.
The two men who died on July 10 were identified as Stephen Taylor, 59, of Hollywood, and Gojko Damjanic, 58, of Fort Lauderdale. One was a private pilot and one was a flight instructor who was training the pilot for a specific qualification, National Transportation Safety Board air safety investigator Daniel Boggs previously said.
Taylor and Damjanic had flown to and from different airports around the state that Wednesday morning into the afternoon, flight-tracking data from FlightAware showed. While practicing taking off and landing at the small airport in northern Palm Beach County shortly after 2 p.m., they crashed from one of the runways into the lake.
The first man who called 911 did not see the crash but told the operator it was reported to him, and he was standing at the scene by the time he called. Three minutes passed and no one surfaced.
“They have not gotten out,” he told the operator.
About a minute later, he told the 911 operator that the plane was 20 feet underwater as two people who were at the scene swam out to it, but it was too deep for them to reach.
“There’s two employees that I had in the water. The airplane is still in the water. The employees could not swim deep enough to get to the fuselage of the airplane,” the caller told the 911 operator, nearly six minutes into the call. It was not clear from the call what kind of employees the witnesses were.
The 911 operator asked if anyone called the air-traffic control tower for information on the plane, but the airport has no tower, the caller said. Seven minutes after the crash, the man told first responders on the call that still no one had surfaced.
“There’s a wing that’s on the surface,” he told the operator. “But it can’t be attached to the airplane …”
Nine minutes into the call, first responders were at the airport.
“They’re in the water … No, the people are in the water,” the man told someone in the background of the call. “We can’t get to the people in the airplane. It’s 20 feet under the water.”
“It’s 20 feet under the water?” someone asked him.
Moments later, what sounded like a helicopter could be heard in the background. More than 10 minutes had passed when the man again told the operator no one had surfaced.
“There’s at least one, maybe two people inside of the airplane, under the water, for at least the last five minutes,” he said to a deputy who had just arrived.
Rescue divers trudged through knee- and waist-high mud before the water was deep enough for them to swim out, Palm Beach County Fire Rescue Capt. Tom Reyes previously told reporters at the scene.
The second man who called 911 worked at the airport. He said he was hearing reports of a crash off of one of the runways but also did not see it and that people were driving out to the runway to investigate, he said.
A woman from the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office joined the call and told the fire rescue representative on the line that the plane was 20 feet under water.
“We don’t have an aircraft number, completely submerged, confirmed people are still in the plane,” the Sheriff’s Office employee told fire rescue.
A Sheriff’s Office helicopter spotted the plane underwater, and the men were brought ashore by a basket hanging from the helicopter by about 3:30 p.m., Reyes previously said. Divers and deputies searched for them for over an hour.
Taylor and Damjanic were pronounced dead when they arrived at the hospital, the Sheriff’s Office previously said.
The NTSB is investigating the crash. The investigators’ preliminary report has not yet been released.
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