RENO, Nev. — A World War II-era fighter plane plunged into the crowd Friday during a popular annual air show, resulting in a “mass casualty event” and creating a horrific scene strewn with body parts and smoking debris.
At least three people died, including the pilot, and officials expected the toll to rise. More than 50 spectators were taken to hospitals, many in critical condition.
The cause of the crash wasn’t immediately known, but an official with the event said there were indications that mechanical problems were at play.
The plane, flown by a renowned 74-year-old air racer and movie stunt pilot, spiraled out of control and appeared to disintegrate upon impact. Bloodied bodies were spread across the area, with people tending to the victims and ambulances rushing to the scene.
Maureen Higgins of Alabama, who has been attending the show for 16 years, said the pilot was on his third lap when he lost control.
She was sitting about 30 yards away from the crash and watched in horror as the man in front of her started bleeding after a piece of debris hit him in the head.
“I saw body parts and gore like you wouldn’t believe it. I’m talking an arm, a leg,” Higgins said. “The alive people were missing body parts. I am not kidding you. It was gore. Unbelievable gore.”
Among the dead was pilot Jimmy Leeward, 74, of Ocala, Fla., a veteran airman and stunt pilot who named his P-51 Mustang fighter plane the “Galloping Ghost,” said Mike Houghton, president and chief executive of Reno Air Races.
Renown Regional Medical Center spokeswoman Kathy Carter confirmed two others died but did not provide their identities.
Stephanie Kruse, a spokeswoman for the Regional Emergency Medical Service Authority, told The Associated Press that emergency crews took 56 injury victims to three hospitals. She said they also observed a number of people being transported by private vehicle, which they are not including in their count.
Kruse said of the total 56, at the time of transport, 15 were considered in critical condition, 13 were serious condition with potentially life-threatening injuries and 28 were non-serious or non-life-threatening.
“This is a very large incident, probably one of the largest this community has seen in decades,” Kruse said. “The community is pulling together to try to deal with the scope of it. The hospitals have certainly geared up and staffed up to deal with it.”
The P-51 Mustang crashed into a box-seat area in front of the grandstand about 4:30 p.m., said race spokesman Mike Draper. Houghton said Leeward appeared to have “lost control of the aircraft,” though details on why that happened weren’t immediately known.
Houghton said at a news conference hours after the crash that there appeared to be a “problem with the aircraft that caused it to go out of control.”
He said the rest of the races have been canceled as the National Transportation Safety Board investigates.
KRNV-TV weatherman Jeff Martinez, who was just outside the air race grounds at the time, said the plane veered and then “it just augered straight into the ground. You saw pieces and parts going everywhere,” he said. “Everyone is in disbelief.”
Tim Linville, 48, of Reno, said the pilot appeared to lose partial control of the plane when he veered off course and flew over the bleachers near where Linville was standing with his two daughters.
“I told the girls to run and the pilot pulled the plane straight up, but he couldn’t do anything else with it,” Linville told the AP. “That’s when it nose-dived right into the box seats.” Linville said after the plane went straight up, it barrel-rolled and inverted downward, crashing into an area where at least 20 people were sitting.
“If he wouldn’t have pulled up, he would have taken out the entire bleacher section,” and hurt thousands of people, Linville said.
Ronald Sargis said he was in the box seat area near the finish line. The box seat area holds 300 to 400 people, while the main grandstands area holds several thousand.
“We could see the plane coming around the far turn — it was in trouble,” Sargis told KCRA-TV in Sacramento. “About six or seven boxes down from us, it impacted into the front row.” He said the pilot appeared to do all he could to avoid crashing into the crowd.
Response teams immediately went to work, Sargis said. After the crash Sargis went up a few rows into the grandstand to view the downed plane. “It appeared to be just pulverized,” he said.
Leeward, the owner of the Leeward Air Ranch Racing Team, was a well-known racing pilot. His website says he has flown in more than 120 races and served as a stunt pilot for numerous movies, including “Amelia” and “Cloud Dancer.”
In an interview with the Ocala Star-Banner last year, he said he has flown 250 types of planes and has a particular fondness for the P-51, which came into the war relatively late and was used as a long-range bomber escort over Europe.”They’re more fun,” Leeward said. “More speed, more challenge. Speed, speed and more speed.”
The National Championship Air Races draws thousands of people to Reno every year in September to watch military and civilian planes race. They also have attracted scrutiny in the past over safety concerns, including four pilots killed in 2007 and 2008. It was such a concern that local school officials once considered whether they should end student field trips at the event.
The competition is like a car race in the sky, with planes flying wingtip-to-wingtip as low as 50 feet off the sagebrush at speeds sometimes surpassing 500 mph.
