TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/072489/07248900.037

Text File | 1992-09-23 | 4KB | 79 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 21

A Bizarre and Suspicious Flight


After 800 miles, a crash, a swim and a gun wound


    All seemed well when Washington lawyer Thomas Root, 36,
climbed into a Cessna 210 Centurion and took off from National
Airport at 6:33 a.m. Thursday. He often piloted himself on
business trips, and the 156-mile jaunt to Rocky Mount, N.C.,
that his flight plan called for appeared routine. Two hours into
his trip, however -- and some 45 minutes after he was expected
to land -- Root radioed the Federal Aviation Administration at
Leesburg, Va., that he was suffering chest pains and having
difficulty breathing.

    As his plane crossed North Carolina and headed south over
the Atlantic, it picked up a small convoy of escorting military
craft that tried to make radio contact but failed. Root appeared
to have suffered a heart attack; pilots saw him sprawled in the
Cessna's cockpit, apparently unconscious. For almost four hours
the Cessna droned over the Atlantic on automatic pilot at about
10,000 ft. Finally, it ran out of fuel 15 miles from the
Bahamian island of Eleuthera and some 800 miles from Washington.
It spiraled on a sharp angle into the sea and sank within six
minutes.

    Then came what seemed a miracle. Four medics who had been
following the flight for its last hour aboard an Air Force
C-130 cargo plane parachuted into the ocean, expecting at most
to recover a body. To their amazement, they saw Root swimming
toward them. Coast Guard Captain Dr. James Rahman later
theorized that carbon monoxide leaking into the Cessna's cabin
caused Root to pass out but that the crash revived him.

    He was bleeding from the abdomen and had fractured ribs,
injuries presumed to have been caused by the crash. Root was
flown to a hospital in Hollywood, Fla., where he was reported
first in critical, then in stable condition. Wife Kathy, 35,
sent him a tongue-in-cheek message: "Root, you really did it
this time."

    But on Friday Hollywood police chief Richard Witt made a
startling report. Exploratory surgery had led doctors to
conclude that Root's injuries resulted from a gunshot wound --
apparently inflicted in the air and at such close range that a
powder burn surrounded the entrance hole.

    After quizzing Root for 40 minutes, Andrew Alston, an
investigator for the National Transportation Safety Board, said
the pilot admitted keeping a .32-cal. revolver in his plane's
glove compartment. But Root insisted that he recalled nothing
about his flight from the moment he blacked out from "a
shortness of breath" until it ended in the water.

    Had Root tried to commit suicide and staged an elaborate
show to make his death look like an accident? Brett Geer, a
brother-in-law who talked with Root in the hospital Friday,
speculated that the lawyer's gun may have gone off during the
crash. Root, a father of three, is an avid gun collector. Last
April, in a check of the Virginia hangar where he kept his
plane, the police found 35 weapons; one was unregistered.

    One possible motive for suicide came to light when North
Carolina's secretary of state disclosed that his office was
investigating Root's role in an alleged security fraud. The FCC
had rebuked him for mishandling procedures in his law practice,
which specializes in helping investors get radio-station
licenses. Root, who is said to be in financial difficulty, is
under investigation by the U.S. Customs Service as a possible
drug smuggler.

    Whether these problems had anything to do with the bizarre
journey remained a mystery at week's end. But if Root's flight
does turn out to have been a suicide mission, no one will be
more shocked than the rescuers who saw him madly swimming for
dear life.