Blood-curdling screams from the mother of the two child victims of the Connecticut plane crash can be heard on 911 tapes obtained Wednesday by WFSB.
In one of the calls, the only thing audible is horrified cries. The next one is from a neighbor of JoAnn Mitchell who says, “a woman is saying that she has two women in the back room where the plane is.”
Mitchell’s screams can be heard in the background.
After Friday’s crash, the children’s mother, Joann Mitchell, yelled for help from the front lawn. Some neighbors tried to rescue the children, but were forced to turn back because of the fire. No one was in the other house at the time of the accident.
“The only thing she kept saying was, ‘I’m not going to leave until we find my girls – you have to find my girls,’” a man who said he was an uncle of the Mitchell children told WFSP.
The funeral for 13-year-old Sade Brantley and 1-year-old Madisyn Mitchell is scheduled for 10 a.m. at Trinity Temple Church of God in Christ in New Haven, according to their aunt Lawanda Middleton.
A 10-seat, propeller-driven plane piloted by former Microsoft executive Bill Henningsgaard struck two homes in East Haven while approaching Tweed New Haven Airport shortly before 11:30 a.m. last Friday. Henningsgaard, 54, of Medina, Wash., and his 17-year-old son, Maxwell, also died in the accident.
The cause of the crash remains under investigation. Officials with the National Transportation Safety Board said the plane, a Rockwell International Turbo Commander 690B, was upside down when it hit the houses at a 60-degree angle, and the pilot didn’t declare an emergency before the crash. A preliminary NTSB report is expected within two weeks.
The two heavily-damaged homes, which caught fire after the accident, were expected to be torn down.
Middleton, who runs a church in Hamden with her husband, said Monday that her family wasn’t releasing any information but may do so later.
“My family’s just grieving right now,” she said.
Funeral information wasn’t available Monday for Henningsgaard and his son.
It was the second plane crash for Henningsgaard, a highly regarded philanthropist and a member of Seattle-based Social Venture Partners, a foundation that helps build up communities. In 2009, he was flying a small plane to Seattle with his mother aboard when the engine quit. He crash-landed in the Columbia River.
Henningsgaard spent 14 years at Microsoft in marketing and sales, according to his biography on the Social Venture Partners website.
With AP