US News

DID U.S. HAVE HAND IN PERU MISSIONARY SHOOTDOWN?

A U.S. surveillance plane watched as a Peruvian jet shot down a plane carrying American missionaries mistaken for drug smugglers – and may have provided the plane’s position, officials said yesterday.

An American Embassy official in Lima said that “a U.S. government tracking aircraft was in the area in support of the Peruvian intercept mission” that downed the plane Friday morning, killing two members of a missionary family.

The official declined to say whether the surveillance craft provided the position of the single-engine pontoon plane.

But he said U.S. tracking planes routinely pass along information to Peru about suspicious planes in the northern jungle region bordering Colombia and Brazil, a cocaine-trafficking route.

“As part of an agreement between the United States and Peru, the United States provides tracking information on planes suspected of smuggling illegal drugs in the region to the Peruvian air force.”

The crash killed missionary Veronica “Roni” Bowers, 35, of Muskegon, Mich., and her 7-month-old adopted daughter, Charity. Pilot Kevin Donaldson was injured. Bowers’ husband, Jim, 35, and their 6-year-old son Cory, who were also on board, were not hurt.

The embassy official spoke after the pilot’s wife, Bobbi, said that an American aircraft was flying nearby when the Peruvian jet shot down the plane.

She said her husband, a second-generation missionary, was shot in the leg during the flight.

He then lost control of the flaming plane before managing to guide it into the Amazon River, where they floated on the craft’s pontoons for a half-hour before being rescued by villagers.

The plane was en route from the Brazil-Peru border to the city of Iquitos, about 625 miles northeast of Lima, when it was shot down.