MILTON, Fla. (AP) — Police searched Monday for an Indiana pilot who claimed in an emergency call that his windshield had shattered, then apparently parachuted out of his small plane, leaving it on auto pilot until it crashed in Florida.
Investigators said the plane’s wreckage showed no signs of the emergency reported by Marcus Schrenker, 38. A man using his Indiana driver’s license checked into an Alabama motel after telling police he’d been in a canoe accident, then disappeared before authorities could question him.
The single-engine Piper Malibu crashed Sunday night in a swampy area of Santa Rosa County in north Florida. It had left Anderson, Ind., en route to the Florida Panhandle city of Destin.
The plane went down within 50 to 75 yards of houses, according to Scott Haines, a spokesman for the county sheriff’s department.
As Schrenker flew over Alabama, he reported turbulence and later said the windshield had blown into the aircraft and he was bleeding profusely, according to the sheriff’s department.
But deputies did not find blood at the crash site and the aircraft’s door was ajar.
Schrenker “appears to have intentionally abandoned the plane after putting it on auto pilot over the Birmingham, Ala., area and parachuting to the ground,” the sheriff’s department said.
Early Monday, a man with Schrenker’s Indiana driver’s license approached police officers in Childersburg, Ala., southeast of Birmingham, and told them he had been in a canoeing accident, according to the Santa Rose County sheriff’s department. He was wet only from the knees down.
The officers, unaware of the Florida plane crash, took the man to a hotel. He was gone by the time they returned. They learned he had paid for his room in cash before putting on a black cap and running into the woods next to the hotel.
Officials from the Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board were at the scene of the crash.
A phone message left Monday for the police chief in Childersburg was not immediately returned.
The Associated Press: Investigators: Man abandoned plane before crash
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