NEW YORK (CNN) -- Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle was the sole person aboard the
plane that crashed Wednesday into a high-rise apartment building in New
York, FBI officials told CNN.

Emergency responders found his passport in the street below, the officials
said.

The small airplane was a Cirrus SR-20 registered to Lidle, 34, said Yankees
manager Joe Torre.(Watch witness accounts of cascading fireballs and a plane
split in half -- 1:58 )

There was a mayday, FAA reports, from the pilot involving a problem with
fuel before the aircraft crashed into the 50-story high-rise on Manhattan's
East Side.

One other person was reportedly killed, according to the New York City Fire
Department and New York City Police Department.

Flames shot out from several windows midway up the luxury high-rise in a
residential neighborhood. Paramedics and rescue workers are treating people
on the ground.

The Federal Aviation Administration described the plane as a "general
aviation" fixed-wing aircraft flying under visual flight rules, meaning a
pilot was flying by visual landmarks. (Watch the orange flames ravage the
apartment -- 1:50)

The plane hit the Belaire Condominiums at 524 E. 72nd Street near the East
River. More than 150 firefighters are on scene of a four-alarm fire in the
building.

Immediately after the crash NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command)
said it had put fighter aircraft into the air over numerous U.S. cities,
though they said they had no reason to believe the event in New York was
anything more than an accident, sources told CNN's Barbara Starr. NORAD did
the same thing after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

NORAD Admiral Timothy Keating told CNN within an hour after the crash that
the agency believed terrorism was not involved.

Steve Coleman, a spokesman for the Port Authority of New York and New
Jersey, which runs New York area airports said he had "no idea where [the
plane] came from."

"We haven't heard from any of our facilities that anything's missing," said
Coleman.

New York City government source told CNN there are "no indications of
terrorism."

The FAA placed a one-mile flight restriction around the site of the crash,
but New York area airports were not affected.

A senior U.S. official in Washington said the administration was waiting for
more information.

Witness Henry Neimark, who is also a pilot, said he saw a plane flying at
relatively low altitude which seemed to come from LaGuardia International
Airport.

"It looked to me in retrospect that this was a pilot desperately trying to
get back to the airport and land safely on a runway," he said.

"The fire was raging out of two windows," witness Sarah Steiner told CNN.
"It looks like the plane just flew into someone's living room."

Steiner said fires were burning on the ground. "It looks like the plane just
flew into someone's living room there."

"It looks as if the aircraft didn't go into the building but fell down," she
said. "It may be part of the debris burning on the ground."

Video from the scene shows at least three apartments in the high-rise
engulfed in flames.


http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/10/11/plane.crash/index.html

Attached Images

 

crosem@earthlink.net wrote:
is it too soon to ask why derek jeter was not on the plane?
probably so.
it's also probably too soon to remind folks to remove lidle from their
keeper league list.

--
zig zigalo
"Does God wish He were Derek Jeter? (crosem's big theological question in
the coffeeshop)

zig zigalo wrote:


If Google Groups did .sig files....

s/

well...I was thinking to myself when I heard this news...how will they work
Derek Jeter into the story?

you know what they say...you can't be too rich, too thin or too cynical...

"zig zigalo" <ziggy1967@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:a_udnUHID_hwyrPYnZ2dnUVZ_tOdnZ2d@giganews.com ...