A friend of the Beat, who witnessed the plane crash on Friday afternoon, spoke to the Beat and has a different timeline for the crash that day.
He was outside feeding horses near where the plane went down and heard and saw the plane leave, flying northward. "I used to fly in the Navy. I know what an engine is supposed to sound like and this one sounded strange. It was a Beechcraft of some sort."
He said about 20 minutes later, he heard it coming back, and it "still sounded strange. I heard the engine rev up very loudly and looked up to see it turn left and nose straight into the ground. I didn't see the impact because of trees, but I heard it and the explosion."
He looked at his watch when he made a phone call and it was 3:52, so his estimate of the crash time was 3:45, at which point he had jumped into his truck and headed toward the crash site to help if he could.
He refuted the rumor going around that a house was hit in the area. "No house was hit; all there was were remnants of the airplane and burned grass."
The next morning early, he returned to the site. A state police officer was there, but directed him to talk to the two Federal Aviation Administration officers who were investigating. "We didn't talk long, but they asked for my name and phone number and said they would call me back. As of Sunday afternoon, no one has called me back."