Woodward man dies in plane crash

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(Photo provided by the Canadian Record)

May 3, 2007

By Rowynn Ricks

Staff Writer

A Woodward man is dead after his single-engine plane crashed near Canadian, Texas early Wednesday afternoon.

The body of Roy James McMurphy, 63, was found along with wreckage from his plane near Red Deer Creek Road, approximately 2.3 miles northwest of the small Texas town.

Justice of the Peace Larry Dunnam pronounced McMurphy dead at the scene and ordered an autopsy on the body.

He said the autopsy, which will be conducted at the Texas Tech Health Science Center in Lubbock this afternoon, is required according to Federal Aviation Administration rules.

Dunnam said the body was found near the engine of the plane, but that other debris from the crash was scattered over an approximately four mile area. He said the wings were discovered at least a quarter of a mile apart, he said, with other debris “just scattered everywhere.”

The plane was a single-engine Zenith Zodiac 601XL registered to McMurphy Consulting.

Hemphill County Airport Manager Charles Kessie, a local attorney with a private pilot’s license, said there are at least two reports from people who reported seeing a plane that matched the description of McMurphy’s plane taking off around 12:30 p.m.

However, he said no one witnessed the crash.

Kessie said he speculates that the plane fell apart in the air since different parts of the plane were scattered over such a large area.

He said that if a plane is intact when it hits the ground, the parts will stay in a certain area or follow a path where the plane skidded across the ground. But if a plane falls apart in the air, he said the debris will be scattered over a larger area since the different pieces fall separately.

In order to determine what exactly happened, he said FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board are sending in a team to investigate the crash.

Most likely, he said the team will remove different instruments from the aircraft and take them to a lab for analysis, to determine exactly what was happening with the airplane when the instruments stooped working.

But it could take up to six months, Kessie said, for their investigation to be complete although they may release a preliminary report sooner than that.

He said the team is scheduled to arrive in Canadian from Dallas sometime today to begin their investigation.

He said during the investigation the FAA and NTSB team should be able to make the final determination as to when the airplane took off and thus be able to determine what the exact conditions were at the time of take off.

However, based on reports that the plane took off around 12:30 p.m., Kessie said flying conditions were “marginal” according to Visual Flight Rules. He said this means that it was up to the pilot’s discretion whether the conditions were okay enough to fly.

McMurphy received his FAA license as a qualified sport pilot in July, 2006, according to Department of Transportation records.

Several different agencies responded to the crash including Hemphill County EMS, Canadian Volunteer Fire Departments, Hemphill County Sheriff’s Office, and Highway Patrol officers from the Texas Department of Public Safety.

The Canadian Record also contributed to this report.