HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. — Robert Gary Jones was a pharmaceutical salesman on a business trip, looking forward to getting home to celebrate his daughter’s third birthday. He was enjoying a moment to himself on this resort island, jogging on the beach and listening to his iPod.
Officials say the Woodstock, Ga., man neither saw nor heard what struck him from behind Monday evening: A single-engine plane making an emergency landing.
The Lancair IV-P aircraft, which can be built from a kit, had lost its propeller, had its windshield covered with oil, and was “basically gliding” as it hit and instantly killed Jones, said Ed Allen, the coroner for Beaufort County on the South Carolina coast.
“There’s no noise,” said aviation expert Mary Schiavo, a former inspector general for the National Transportation Safety Board. “So the jogger, with his ear buds in, and the plane without an engine, you’re basically a stealth aircraft. Who would expect to look up?”
The pilot, Edward I. Smith of Chesapeake, Va., and his passenger both walked away from the crash landing near the Hilton Head Marriott Resort and Spa.
Jones, a 38-year-old salesman for pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline, was in Hilton Head on a business trip, his mother said.
Pauline Jones, of Dunedin, Fla., described him as “great son, a wonderful husband,” She said he lived in the northern Atlanta suburbs with his wife, Jennifer, their daughter and a 5-year-old son.
“I was never so shocked in all my life,” Pauline Jones said, her voice shaking.
National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Keith Holloway said no cause had been determined for the crash.
