•  To read the Ohio State Highway Patrol's plane crash report in full, click the document listed below this story.
  

PUT-IN-BAY

Steve Rose may have thought his eyes deceived him. 

The small, gray plane was flying far too low as it approached Put-in-Bay from the west. 

“I was wondering why this gray plane was so close to the water,” Rose said. “Next thing I know, I looked up and it skipped once, and then it crashed into the water.”

The crisis didn’t end when the 1977 Cessna crash-landed in Lake Erie. 

And Rose, captain of a Miller Boat Line ferry, had more than just a front-row seat to the spectacular crash off South Bass Island on Friday morning. 

He and others on his ferry rescued the plane’s four occupants, who managed to escape from the sinking wreckage.

It all started at about 11:30 a.m., when Rose’s ferry was running a few minutes late.       

He stood in the boat’s pilothouse, waiting for his deck hands to lift the ramp after loading the final cars onto the boat. Not minutes after the ferry pulled away from the island dock, the Cessna T210M appeared low in the sky.  

Far too low. 

The plane landed in water about 22 feet deep, and about 30 feet away from the end of the island dock.

“I figure if we would have left a minute or two earlier, it would have hit the boat,” Rose said.

He moved the ferry quickly toward the sinking plane and shouted orders at his crew.

“We just heard Steve coming over the microphone saying something about ‘Go up into the bow of the boat,’” said Jake Market, one of the deck hands. “I saw the plane starting to sink, and that’s when we just kicked into overdrive.”

To watch the rescue footage by New York state resident Jon Cook, click on the player below.

The plane sank in less than three minutes, but all four occupants managed to scramble into the water. 

Market and two other crew members, Bernie Wise and Greg Johnson, had trained for situations like this. They tossed a life ring and a few life jackets to the people in the water, then put a ladder over the side and pulled the people in with a boat hook.  

The plane’s fast-acting pilot told authorities he ditched the plane near the Miller ferry for an easy rescue.

The plane left Canton, Mich., that morning with four occupants from the Detroit area: the pilot and owner of the plane, Mark F. Neal, 61, Westland, Mich., and passengers Michael Reddy, 67, Westland, and Amber McClure, 21, and Ashley Braunstein, 21, both of Detroit. 

McClure suffered a bruised shoulder, but the other three reported no injuries.

Neal told authorities the plane lost power as he approached the island in a final turn, a half-mile from the airport. At about 400 feet, he tried to restart the engine several times but failed.

“At that point, he saw a Miller ferry coming in, and he knew he was going to have to make a water landing, so he wanted to take it down near the ferry for a quick recovery,” said Sgt. Eric Short, of the Ohio State Highway Patrol’s Sandusky post. 

The plane started sinking nose-first as soon as it hit the water.

Neal told authorities he, Reddy, and McClure escaped out the pilot’s-side door. But Braunstein, in the front-passenger seat, couldn’t reach that door, or even open her own because of the water pressure.

As the plane sank, Braunstein headed for the rear luggage area. 

“The pilot had enough sense to open the rear luggage (door) and get her out that way,” Short said.

Dozens of passengers on the Miller ferry watched the scene unfold. 

Among them was Buffalo, N.Y. resident Jon Cook, who captured most of the rescue on video with his iPhone. 

Cook said the ferry’s crew had to shoo away passengers who seemed eager to help.

As the ferry crew pulled the occupants in from the water, the plane’s two men appeared calm, while the women seemed to panic. One of the women, still in the water, screamed, “Get me out of here! Somebody help me, please!” 

“I actually talked to that girl when she got up on the deck,” said Cook, who’d been visiting Put-in-Bay Friday with members of his church. “Her comment was, ‘I’m never riding on an airplane again.’”

Ferry passengers got towels for the victims and then helped them onto the dock when the boat returned to the island. Emergency personnel whisked them away.

In addition to State Patrol, others who responded to the scene included Put-in-Bay police and fire, Ohio Division of Watercraft, U.S. Coast Guard and Federal Aviation Administration officials. 

Salvage crews endeavored to retrieve the plane from the lake’s murky depths, and FAA officials said they’ll examine it in hopes of pinpointing the cause of the crash.

“The last time we had a plane crash here was in 2004,” Put-in-Bay police Chief Robert “Ric” Lampela said. “I don’t ever remember, in the history of the airport here, having one in the water.”

Authorities and Miller Boat Line employees reflected afterward on the quick action and good luck that kept the crash from becoming a tragedy.

Despite the shock of what had just happened, in fact, the Miller ferryboat crew continued with their ferry run after helping the crash victims onto the dock. The boat made it to Catawba Island only five minutes late.

GET YOUR PHOTOS PUBLISHED: Did you get a photo or video of the crash or rescue? If so, send it to photo@sanduskyregister.com.

Related File(s): 

Ohio State Highway Patrol plane crash report