F-16s Collide Over Indiana

Two F-16s collided in the air near Oaktown (IN) Monday. One pilot was killed, the other was hurt. He was hospitalized after parachuting to the ground.

"We heard a big explosion. It pretty well shook the building," said Cecil Meeks, who owns a gas station in Oaktown. "And then we went out and you could see one of the guys parachuting down, and you could see one of the fighter planes just flying around in circles till he came to the ground. There was another plane up there and he was circling around while the guy was parachuting down."

A spokesman for the Indiana State Police said one of the aircraft went down near Oaktown. The other crashed across the border in Illinois, he said.

Another witness, Lisa Hall, told the Associated Press that she saw one of the pilots after the collision. "I walked outside and saw the man coming down in the parachute," Hall said. "His parachute wasn’t open, it was collapsed."

Former Knox County Sheriff Don Kirkham heard the commotion from above while he was cutting his grass. Spotting a parachute drifting toward the ground, Kirkham told the AP he ran to help the injured pilot.

"He’s OK. He’s bleeding from facial wounds," Kirkham said. "All he was concerned about was his buddy. He said ‘I’m not worried about anything but my buddy,’ so we cornered him and got him into an ambulance."

A military team was en route to Oaktown to take control of the crash investigation, according to a spokesman for the Air National Guard Base in nearby Terre Haute.

FMI: www.af.mil