One hospitalized after plane crash
Publication: Portland Press Herald
By Larry David Hansen
Staff Writer
KENNEBUNKPORT – Portland lawyer Thomas N. Tureen was hospitalized and a passenger received minor injuries after Tureen’s plane crashed during an emergency landing in a field here.
Tureen, attorney for the Passamaquoddy and Penobscot tribes in a successful $80 million suit against the U.S. government in 1980, suffered head injuries in the crash after the engine failed in his single-propeller plane at about 11:25 a.m., said Mike Ciccarelli, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration.
Tureen, 45, pilot of the plane, remains in fair condition at the Southern Maine Medical Center in Biddeford.
His only passenger, Donald Perkin, 32, vice president of Tribal Assets Management, a Portland investment banking firm, was treated at the hospital for minor injuries and released.
The engine failed somewhere over the Kennebunkport area, Ciccarelli said. Tureen turned the four-seat Beechcraft Bonanza around, intending to land at the Biddeford Airport, but crashed in a 12-acre field about three miles south of the airport.
Ciccarelli said the FAA is conducting an investigation into the cause of the engine failure.
Tureen and Perkin took off from Portland International Jetport at 11:16 a.m. bound for Boston’s Logan Airport, Ciccarelli said. An employee of Tureen’s said the two were on a business trip to Boston.
Seven minutes later, Tureen sent out a distress call to Portland Jetport controllers, who directed him back to the Biddeford Airport. Controllers immediately notified local police and other aircraft in the vicinity.
The plane apparently struck the tops of a few trees at field’s edge before crashing. It was found about 50 yards into the open field. Parts of the plane were scattered not far from the aircraft, which sustained a smashed nose and dented wings.
Though the plane was carrying about 80 gallons of gasoline, there was no explosion. Valerie Brennon, who heard the crash, said it was surprisingly quiet.
“It sounded like a truck that hit a bump in the road,” said Brennon, who at the time of the crash was sitting in her home on Lefter Wildes Road, about a mile away.
Jane Binette of Kennebunkport, who lives about a quarter mile from where the crash occurred, said she didn’t know about the crash until she “happened to look in the field and saw a plane sitting there.”
When the Kennebunkport Emergency Medical Service arrived, emergency rescuers discovered that Tureen had been carried by Perkin about 50 yards away from the plane.
Perkin feared an explosion after smelling gas fumes after the crash, said Dick Ackley of the Kennebunkport Fire Department.
The accident was the first plane crash in Kennebunkport, said Dan Philbrick, the town’s fire chief.
About 25 town firefighters remained on the scene until the state Department of Environmental Protection determined the gas leak was minor.
Kennebunkport, summer home of President Bush, has FAA-regulated restrictions for aircraft.
No plane may fly within one mile of Bush’s home on Walker’s Point, said the FAA’s Ciccarelli.