Boston Herald
January 26, 2004

Two men elude death in fiery Bedford plane crash

By Tom Farmer and Jennifer Rosinski

Two men who walked away from their crashed airplane in Bedford
Saturday night before it erupted into flames were recovering at the Lahey
Clinic in Burlington yesterday, and investigators said an engine fire may
have caused the forced landing.

``They were knocking on the doorstep of death,'' said witness Mark
Little, who called 911 and welcomed the dazed and bloodied men into his
Dudley Street home.

``We were all sitting here looking at each other saying we can't
believe they're alive. They must have gotten out of that plane just in
time.''

The men, whose names were not released yesterday, stunned responding
emergency workers by escaping the burning wreckage with their lives.

``I was dumbfounded,'' said Bedford police Sgt. Bob Barbieri. ``One guy
had a small cut over his eye and the other one had a cut between his eyes.
They ran about 300 yards from the crash site to a neighbor's house.''

Barbieri said federal investigators suspect an engine fire brought down
the single-engine Rockwell International Aero Commander, which was
registered to 114 Interactive Group of Nashua, N.H.

``They believe the engine caught fire and they had to shut it down,''
Barbieri said. ``(Investigators) will be coming back (today) to examine the
engine.''

The aircraft was headed from Hyannis to Nashua when it went down about
10 p.m. Saturday.

Little was playing on the computer in his living room and the rest of
his family was watching television when they heard a loud boom in the woods,
he said.

``I looked out the window and there was a big fireball in the woods,''
said Little. ``The whole woods was up in flames.''

Unsure of what to do next, Little grabbed his binoculars to get a
closer look and soon saw a flashlight coming through the woods from the
fireball some 300 yards behind his back yard.

``It was a couple of guys who yelled out that their plane went down,''
he said.

As the men, in their 40s, walked closer, Little saw that one man had a
face covered in blood.

``They were beat up,'' he said. ``But they were actually pretty alert.
They were obviously stunned.''

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