Story in today’s Tulsa World:
5 killed in plane crash in Glenpool
by: SUSAN HYLTON and RANDY KREHBIEL World Staff Writers
10/18/2007
GLENPOOL – Five people were killed Wednesday when a small, single-engine aircraft crashed and burst into flames in a residential area east of U.S. 75.
Tulsa attorney Bill Lunn said his wife and their three children died in the crash along with the pilot, an Episcopal priest and former state legislator. Lunn identified the dead as:
Dr. Rhonda Lunn, 51.
Kathryn Lunn, 16.
Michael Lunn, 14.
Adrienne Lunn, 14.
The Rev. Bill Wiseman Jr., 63.
The bodies were taken to the state Medical Examiner’s Office in Tulsa, City Manager Ed Tinker said. Authorities were not releasing the names of the victims.
Larry Pinney, the owner of the 1978 Beechcraft A36, said Wiseman was his friend.
“I’m totally sick to my stomach,” he said.
Bill Lunn said Wiseman was taking Rhonda Lunn and the children to visit her parents in the Houston area.
Rhonda Lunn practiced obstetrics and gynecology out of St. Francis Hospital, Bill Lunn said. The children were all students at Cascia Hall. Twins Michael and Adrienne were in the ninth grade; Kathryn was in the 11th grade.
Glenpool Police Chief Dennis Waller said there were no survivors in the crash, which occurred about 2 p.m. in the Coal Creek Landing housing addition off 121st Street.
The National Transportation Safety Board asked local officials to secure the crash site pending an investigation.
The six-seat plane went down within 100 to 150 yards of houses as severe thunderstorms were moving into the area. There were no injuries on the ground or other structural damage, Waller said.
The plane was owned by Pinney’s company, Transportation Locators, which sells aircraft at Jones Riverside Airport.
Pinney said a flight plan was filed and added that he did not know what caused the accident.
The occupants were on their way from the Jones Riverside Airport to the Houston area, he said. Records show that the destination was the Sugar Land Regional Airport.
The plane was demolished and burned, and officials could not make out the registration numbers.
“There’s a piece of a tailfin, and that’s the only thing that you can tell it was an airplane,” Tinker said.
Ed Reiser of Owasso said he saw the winds flipping the yellow, single-engine airplane all over the sky as he was driving south on U.S. 75.
He said he saw the plane clip a transmission line and go wing-down and then nose-down toward the ground.
Waller said the clipped transmission line hampered rescuers’ initial efforts on the rain-soaked ground. Crews worked into the evening trying to restore the lines.
The Fire Department extinguished the flames, which were confined to the crash scene.
Tinker said he was at Glenpool City Hall a few miles away at the time.
“It was very windy. The windows were rattling. Our lights flickered, and we looked to the north and saw the smoke,” he said.
Stan Whiteford, a spokesman for American Electric Power-Public Service Company of Oklahoma, said the downed line affected industrial customers for a short time, but no residential customers lost power because of the crash.
Wiseman, as a 33-year-old state representative in 1977, introduced the nation’s first death-by-lethal-injection legislation. He served three terms in the House before being defeated in 1980.
Elected as a Republican from Tulsa, Wiseman switched parties in 1979 and was defeated the next fall by Nelson “Freckles” Little.
Wiseman remained active in politics for several years while working in public relations and marketing. In 2005 he was ordained as a priest in the Episcopal Church.
He was serving as vicar of the Church of the Holy Cross in Owasso and as director of university relations at the University of Central Oklahoma in Edmond at the time of his death.
