thedrifter
05-01-07, 08:00 AM
Pendleton Marines recover plane crash victims
Fishing trip takes tragic turn as pair witnesses deadly crash
By Gidget Fuentes - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Apr 30, 2007 18:45:26 EDT
OCEANSIDE, Calif. — With his son and a buddy in tow, Gunnery Sgt. Jeffrey Hellams left Camp Pendleton’s Del Mar Marina early Sunday morning piloting his 25-foot boat for a planned day of fishing.
Hellams typically steers his boat north from the channel entrance to fish in the waters off Camp Pendleton. But on this day, something drew them to comb the waters south of the Oceanside Harbor entrance and they headed to the coast off of Carlsbad, just south of Oceanside.
As they fished in the overcast morning shortly before 10 a.m., they heard the puttering sounds of an airplane engine. A small commercial airfield, Palomar Airport, lies three miles inland.
But something quickly went wrong. “You hear planes all the time. This thing kind of went higher in pitch, and it revved up,” Hellams recalled. “Once it revved up, then it cut off.”
“We saw a huge splash in the water,” he said.
A small Cessna airplane, which took off from Palomar minutes before, had crashed.
Hellams’ boat and a sailboat were the only vessels in the vicinity. So the gunny quickly sped his boat to where he saw the plane hit the water. Hoping for survivors, he and 1st Sgt. Michael Saucedo, his friend and company first sergeant, scrambled to save anyone they could find.
“When we came on the scene, there was debris everywhere,” Hellams said. “When we raced out there, we weren’t sure that there was a plane.”
The impact of the crash had shattered the airplane. “We just started netting debris,” he said.
“We recovered a satchel, something that had a bunch of papers,” he said. “We were trying to get anything.” Among the debris recovered was a man’s wallet. They listened to Channel 16 on their marine radio, the dedicated emergency channel. Hellams called his wife and asked her to call 911.
They spotted one of the victims, a woman. She was dead, and their hopes of saving a life were gone. They found a second woman, but she too was gone. “They were dead,” Hellams said. “I’ve been to war, and I’ve seen a lot of this stuff, but….”
A Coast Guard helicopter flew over the site. Within 20 minutes of the crash, a pair of lifeguards on Jet Skis reached Hellams’ boat, and they helped pull the bodies of the two women onto the fishing boat. The growing force of search-and-rescue teams eventually would include Coast Guard cutters, Oceanside Harbor Police and lifeguard teams from nearby coastal cities. The sailor on the nearby sailboat didn’t actively participate in the recovery and later left the scene, Hellams said.
The two victims’ bodies were transferred to a Coast Guard vessel, and Hellams eventually made his way back to Oceanside Harbor. A third person, the pilot, was missing and is presumed dead. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash.
News reports, authorities and a relative identified the victims as Sharon and Leroy Kocher, who were married, and Sharon Kocher’s daughter, Alexandria Meekcoms, 25. They were returning home to Chandler, Ariz., after visiting Nichole Burgan, Sharon Kocher’s daughter who lives in Carlsbad and recently had a baby. Leroy Kocher, a retired dentist, was a pilot.
Hellams, a combat veteran and a family readiness officer with I Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton, knows the effects of such tragedies on one’s psyche. He’s already sought out some counseling for himself, and he hopes to take his son and join Saucedo at a twilight candlelight vigil planned in Carlsbad on Monday evening.
“We did what we needed to do as good Samaritans. We did what we needed to do as Marines,” he said.
But he worries for his son Bo, who witnessed death up close and saw the horrors of a plane crash. “He says he’s fine and he says he’s good,” he said. But “he says he remembers things.”
It’s been an emotional rollercoaster as Hellams rethinks and relives Sunday’s events and his actions and wonders about the victims. “We went to go and try to save somebody,” he said. “At least that family has closure to know where they are, and they don’t have to wonder.”
Hallems realizes that he didn’t fish that day in his regular spot north of the channel. If they had, they wouldn’t have been in the position where they could try to save the victims or recover them for their families. But drawn to a different fishing spot, they were able to help in some way.
“That’s what our mission has got to be,” he said.
Ellie
Fishing trip takes tragic turn as pair witnesses deadly crash
By Gidget Fuentes - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Apr 30, 2007 18:45:26 EDT
OCEANSIDE, Calif. — With his son and a buddy in tow, Gunnery Sgt. Jeffrey Hellams left Camp Pendleton’s Del Mar Marina early Sunday morning piloting his 25-foot boat for a planned day of fishing.
Hellams typically steers his boat north from the channel entrance to fish in the waters off Camp Pendleton. But on this day, something drew them to comb the waters south of the Oceanside Harbor entrance and they headed to the coast off of Carlsbad, just south of Oceanside.
As they fished in the overcast morning shortly before 10 a.m., they heard the puttering sounds of an airplane engine. A small commercial airfield, Palomar Airport, lies three miles inland.
But something quickly went wrong. “You hear planes all the time. This thing kind of went higher in pitch, and it revved up,” Hellams recalled. “Once it revved up, then it cut off.”
“We saw a huge splash in the water,” he said.
A small Cessna airplane, which took off from Palomar minutes before, had crashed.
Hellams’ boat and a sailboat were the only vessels in the vicinity. So the gunny quickly sped his boat to where he saw the plane hit the water. Hoping for survivors, he and 1st Sgt. Michael Saucedo, his friend and company first sergeant, scrambled to save anyone they could find.
“When we came on the scene, there was debris everywhere,” Hellams said. “When we raced out there, we weren’t sure that there was a plane.”
The impact of the crash had shattered the airplane. “We just started netting debris,” he said.
“We recovered a satchel, something that had a bunch of papers,” he said. “We were trying to get anything.” Among the debris recovered was a man’s wallet. They listened to Channel 16 on their marine radio, the dedicated emergency channel. Hellams called his wife and asked her to call 911.
They spotted one of the victims, a woman. She was dead, and their hopes of saving a life were gone. They found a second woman, but she too was gone. “They were dead,” Hellams said. “I’ve been to war, and I’ve seen a lot of this stuff, but….”
A Coast Guard helicopter flew over the site. Within 20 minutes of the crash, a pair of lifeguards on Jet Skis reached Hellams’ boat, and they helped pull the bodies of the two women onto the fishing boat. The growing force of search-and-rescue teams eventually would include Coast Guard cutters, Oceanside Harbor Police and lifeguard teams from nearby coastal cities. The sailor on the nearby sailboat didn’t actively participate in the recovery and later left the scene, Hellams said.
The two victims’ bodies were transferred to a Coast Guard vessel, and Hellams eventually made his way back to Oceanside Harbor. A third person, the pilot, was missing and is presumed dead. The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the crash.
News reports, authorities and a relative identified the victims as Sharon and Leroy Kocher, who were married, and Sharon Kocher’s daughter, Alexandria Meekcoms, 25. They were returning home to Chandler, Ariz., after visiting Nichole Burgan, Sharon Kocher’s daughter who lives in Carlsbad and recently had a baby. Leroy Kocher, a retired dentist, was a pilot.
Hellams, a combat veteran and a family readiness officer with I Marine Expeditionary Force at Camp Pendleton, knows the effects of such tragedies on one’s psyche. He’s already sought out some counseling for himself, and he hopes to take his son and join Saucedo at a twilight candlelight vigil planned in Carlsbad on Monday evening.
“We did what we needed to do as good Samaritans. We did what we needed to do as Marines,” he said.
But he worries for his son Bo, who witnessed death up close and saw the horrors of a plane crash. “He says he’s fine and he says he’s good,” he said. But “he says he remembers things.”
It’s been an emotional rollercoaster as Hellams rethinks and relives Sunday’s events and his actions and wonders about the victims. “We went to go and try to save somebody,” he said. “At least that family has closure to know where they are, and they don’t have to wonder.”
Hallems realizes that he didn’t fish that day in his regular spot north of the channel. If they had, they wouldn’t have been in the position where they could try to save the victims or recover them for their families. But drawn to a different fishing spot, they were able to help in some way.
“That’s what our mission has got to be,” he said.
Ellie