yeah so they make you log in for the full story.
May 22, 2005 -- A small plane trailing black smoke crashed onto the beach in Coney Island yesterday, killing four and horrifying beachgoers who saw the victims' terror-stricken faces during the fatal plunge.
An experienced local pilot, Endrew Allen, 34, of Jamaica, Queens, who a police source said flew over his girlfriend's home to impress her moments before the crash, was among the dead, cops said.
The other three on board were sightseers Courtney Block, 39; his daughter, Danielle Block, 18, both of Benwood, W.Va.; and her friend, Jo-Beth Marie Gross, 18, of nearby McMechen, W.Va.
The passengers were in town for the weekend visiting relatives in New Jersey and hired the plane for a half-hour tour over the city's skyline, said Courtney Block's brother Army Spc. Douglas Block.
Originally a third teenage girl, Melissa McCulley, was on board the flight, but got airsick, and the plane turned around, said Rene Roy, the principal of the West Virginia high school the three attended.
The elder Block then got on board the fateful flight in her place, said the educator, who had spoken to a family member of one of the victims.
At 1:45 p.m., the single-engine Cessna 172 Skyhawk, tragically plunged into the sand at West 16th Street near the Coney Island boardwalk — as scores of beachgoers and boardwalk strollers looked on in horror.
The throng of sun seekers on the famous beach were shaken by the experience, but no one on the ground was injured.
The plane took off from Linden Airport in New Jersey at 1 p.m.
According to Luke Schiaba, a senior air safety investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, Allen had between 1,800 and 1,900 hours of flight experience.
The plane's route, parallel to the beach, is a popular one for flight students and it also took the instructor over his girlfriend's house, sources said.
The girlfriend, Keturah Ponce, 23, was sleeping when the plane flew near her beachside apartment. She ran down to the beach when awoken by her mother, who heard the crash.
"She's doing very badly right now," her mother Josephine Ponce said. "She's not good."
The woman, a devout Jew, said Allen came and spent Passover with the family for the past two years, although he did not share the faith.
"You don't meet spirits like that today," she said.
Witnesses said the Cessna appeared to begin experiencing trouble over Keyspan Park, the baseball stadium for the minor-league Brooklyn Cyclones, which is a short distance from Ponce's home.
Beachcombers and boardwalk strollers said they heard the engine sputter and stall, then start again as the plane began descending toward the ocean.
The Cessna started making circles as it flew only about 100 feet above land, coughing black trails of smoke.
At first, many thought the pilot was performing a foolish stunt. But they soon realized something was horribly wrong.
"The plane flew over my head," said Kelon Edgehill, 21, an employee at Deno's Amusement Park. "I said, 'It's too low. It's going to crash.' "
Abedemi Akinwande, 39, said the plane was so low he could see the frantic pilot and passengers through the windows.
"I was able to see the people's expressions in the plane," he said. "They looked like they were panicking. One of them was grabbing his head and the other one was struggling with something."
Edgehill and others said the plane swerved towards the ocean in what appeared to be a desperate attempt to land in water. The pilot then seemed to make a final, frenzied push to gain altitude.
"It started going up," said Roberto Paredes, 10. "Then it stopped [for] a . . . second. Then it went down fast."
"He was getting lower and lower," said Kevin Kelly, 42. "Then he just nose-dived in the sand. There was blood all over the place."
The right side of the plane was torn off, one wing was ripped away and part of the tail also fell off from the impact of the crash — just 50 feet from the water.
Beachgoers rushed to aid the victims.
Joshua McCabe, 33, a registered nurse, said he found a slight pulse on a bloodied woman in the back seat. But after only about 30 seconds, she was dead, he said.
A man in the front seat also had a slight pulse, witnesses said, but it, too, soon faded.
A spokeswoman for the Federal Aviation Administration, Holly Baker, said there was no distress signal and the plane had not been in contact with air-traffic control — but wasn't required to be.
In tiny McMechen, classmates and relatives of the two girls gathered at Bishop Donahue HS, hugging and weeping when they heard the news.
Gross, a standout softball pitcher, lost her mother to cancer several years ago, and her father was so distraught, he had to be hospitalized, the Wheeling News Register reported.
Brock's brother, Douglas, who lives in Brooklyn, said Courtney worked for UPS and described Danielle as "very, very studious" with a high grade-point average.
From our local news:
The plane went down around 2:00 Saturday afternoon. A sightseeing plane was taking three people from the Ohio Valley on a tour when the plane crashed on the beach. Two of the passengers were Danielle Block and Jo-Beth Gross, both were seniors at Bishop Donahue High School. The two girls were scheduled to graduate this Tuesday. Courtney Block, Danielle's father, was also killed in the crash. The school principal describes the students; "They were happy, outgoing, well-balanced, well-behaved, well brought up, the ideal of a teenager today. They were involved in service, involved in sports academically, they were at the top of their class, both had scholarships to go to colleges." Danielle was planning on attending Wheeling Jesuit University and Jo-Beth was on her way to Bethany college. At the time of the crash there were many people on the beach, but no one on the group was injured. Investigators aren't sure what caused the plane to go down