New 911 calls released Wednesday reveal how the Triangle region’s emergency responders quickly mobilized to begin searching for a co-pilot who had reportedly jumped from a plane before it made an emergency landing at North Carolina's Raleigh-Durham International Airport.
Just before 3 p.m. on July 30, Cary 911 received its first call from Raleigh-Wake Emergency Communications Center alerting them of a co-pilot who had “jumped” from a small plane mid-flight.
“The co-pilot jumped out?” the dispatcher said, sounding incredulous.
According to six audio recordings released Wednesday by the Cary Police Department, the surviving pilot notified air traffic control that his co-pilot, Charles Hew Crooks, had jumped before their plane landed at Raleigh-Durham International Airport.
The first calls said Crooks had jumped from the plane within a 1-mile radius of West Lake Middle School on West Lake Road.
Within minutes, around 2:57 p.m., emergency responders started assembling at West Lake Middle in Cary. They started talking about what they would need for the search: a drone, a helicopter and perhaps an underwater drone. They worked to obtain a description of Crooks and to pinpoint where he may have landed.
Subsequently, Cary Fire Department was instructed to start combing the wooded areas within the radius of West Lake Middle School.
A short while later, dispatchers were told that the FAA had recalculated the location of the plane when the pilot called to report that Crooks had jumped. The plane was roughly over 3029 James Slaughter Road, the FAA calculated.
The unnamed dispatcher said the pilot was “very shaken up” by the incident. The pilot who landed the plane has not yet been identified.
By 5 p.m., authorities were searching an expansive area of Wake County from Cary south to the Harnett County line.
Crooks, 23, was found dead at 7 p.m., in the Sonoma Springs Subdivision in Fuquay-Varina. He was found roughly five miles from West Lake Middle but just a few hundred yards from James Slaughter Road.
During the initial frenzy of the search, first responders lacked a full description of the co-pilot. He was first described as a 27-year-old man. This was later corrected.
They knew he was a 5-foot-10 white male, wearing a black shirt and tan pants. They didn’t yet know his name.
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