Berkeley County officials release 911 calls from F-16, Cessna crash

MONCKS CORNER, S.C. (WCIV) -- Berkeley County dispatchers fielded nearly a dozen calls from witnesses moments after an F-16 crashed into a Cessna C-150 on July 7th.

Berkeley County officials released the calls Friday from residents who either witnessed the mid-air collision or saw the debris raining from the sky.

"I just saw two planes collide in the air," said the first caller, a man from Lewisfield Plantation. "One of them dropped, I think, in our rice field."

The man and his son were navigating the wooded terrain and water, looking for survivors.

"I'm trying to get to the plane now but it's tough," he said. "There was like a military plane, a jet plane. It came over really fast and hit a little plane. The little plane dropped out of the sky."

Authorities say father and son Michael and Joseph Johnson, who were flying the small plane to Myrtle Beach, died in the crash. The pilot of the F-16 safely ejected from the jet.

The caller said the jet plane was flying low when the planes collided, erupting into thick black smoke.

"It came over flying really low and pretty fast and ran into the other one," he said of the jet.

The caller gave the phone to his young son as he continued to search the water for the plane.

"The black smoke's gone. We just see pieces of it everywhere," the son said.

They told the dispatcher that the plane was underwater in a pond in the woods.

"I see a shoe floating in the water," the boy said. "We can see what looks like a piece of a body. There's body parts. Oh God, there's more."

A second caller said he was on the Cooper River when he saw the jet, mistaking the debris for "pretend bombs."

"There was a jet that flew over the Cooper River. He dropped, well it looked like he was dropping pretend bombs but he damned near hit me. Those bombs were coming right down on my head. He missed me maybe by 100 yards," he said.

Part of the jet's afterburner landed in a campground on McCray Drive.

"Two planes just collided and part of the pieces are here in the campground," said the third caller, a woman at the campground. "We don't really know what's going on. It just happened. There's a big explosion ... There are just pieces everywhere."

A number of people called to make sure dispatchers already knew about the crash.

The tenth caller said she was sitting in her yard when she saw it happen.

"We heard what we thought was a sonic boom to our left," she said. "And then that fighter jet came right over our heads and turned, gently, you know more to the Cooper River and then we heard what sounded like another boom."

Sat, 25 Jul 2015 00:29:15 GMT — undefined