A Basalt photographer who was piloting a small plane that crashed near a Kentucky airport Sunday is in critical condition today in a Louisville, Ky., burn unit.
Richard Shenk was flying his Cessna 210 Centurion near Bowman Field, where he was scheduled to land, when the plane crashed in a nearby residential neighborhood.
Michael Oost, who lives six houses away from the home, went to help when he heard the crash. “The pilot was in really sad condition. He was lying crossways in the seat; he was getting fried,” Oost said in a telephone interview.
Oost got a garden hose from a neighbor and sprayed water on the wreckage, being careful to avoid Shenk’s badly burned body.
“I didn’t want to put cold water on him. I didn’t know if that would put him in shock. I hope he was unconscious because it was a terrible sight to see,” Oost said.
Firefighters used the jaws of life to remove Shenk from the plane when they arrived.
Oost lives about a mile from the small airfield and said he has heard hundreds of planes landing and taking off each month. There was something different about the sound Shenk’s Cessna made as it flew near his home, he added.
“This plane sounded weird. It was real low, and all of a sudden, the engine stopped, and I was thinking, ‘That doesn’t sound good.’ Three or four seconds later, I heard something like a car crash.”
The plane first hit the sidewalk before bouncing across the street to land in front of a driveway. “It came within a very few feet of hitting a house.”
Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis has used a picture that Shenk took of him in his campaign literature and to promote “The Kitchen Readings: Untold Stories of Hunter S. Thompson,” a book he wrote with Michael Cleverly. “He is a very outgoing professional photographer,” Braudis said of Shenk.
Shenk is about 60 years old, Braudis said.
The photographer is in critical condition in the burn unit of University of Louisville Hospital.
No one else was hurt in the accident.
