ShareThisCHAPEL HILL, N.C. - Kyle Henn walked away from a plane crash at a small airport here that killed one man and left another in critical condition, but you can't say he's lucky.
Kyle Henn, 22, of Newark, Del., was apparently en route to Raleigh, N.C., on Monday afternoon to join his family in mourning the death of his older brother, who was among at least 74 people killed Sunday in terrorist bombings in Uganda.
Nate Henn, 25, was an aid worker slain along with dozens of Ugandans in the country's capital, Kampala, when bombs went off among crowds watching the soccer World Cup finals.
Then, hours later, the Henn family nearly lost Kyle when the single-engine Cirrus SR20 that he was riding in crashed Monday on its approach to the runway at Horace Williams Airport. The wreckage came to rest under a tree and against a fence that borders the Carolina North Forest.
The plane was registered to a Delaware company named Thomas F. Pitts LLC. A distraught woman who answered the phone at Thomas Pitts' home Monday identified herself as his wife and said she wasn't able to talk.
The News Journal of Wilmington, Del., has identified the pilot, who was killed, as Thomas F. Pitts and the co-pilot, who was in critical condition, as Jim Donohue, a close friend of Pitts.
The News Journal quoted another Pitts friend, Jon Beeson, saying that Pitts had offered to fly Henn to North Carolina so Henn could be with his family as quickly as possible.
Kyle Henn was in the emergency room at University of North Carolina Hospitals on Monday night. A hospital spokesman said he was in fair condition.
A friend who had worked with the same relief group as Nate and his sister, Brynne, 19, said that the shock and stress on the family after losing one brother then nearly losing the other was unthinkable
"Last night when I got the news about Nate, my knees just gave out," said Shannon Episcopo of Portland, Maine. "I talked to Brynne briefly this morning, but then, with Kyle's crash, I can't even imagine what it's like."
Brynne Henn did talk about her brother, Nate, before the plane crash Monday. She said that the family had moved from Delaware to Raleigh in 2007, and Nate once lived in Raleigh for about a year.
For the past year and a half, she said, he had worked to end the war in northern Uganda.
The humanitarian group Nate Henn worked with, Invisible Children, according to its website, makes documentaries about children affected by war in East Africa and shows them around the world, with the goal of "mobilizing a generation to capture the attention of the international community, and make a stand for justice in the wake of genocide."
Nate Henn, a Christian and former college rugby player, organized the world tours.
According to the group, Nate Henn went to Uganda to see the homeland of some of the friends he met on tour, several of whom were with him on Sunday at the rugby club where a bomb went off. Episcopo said that he had brimmed with life and energy and never let things like national borders, race or economic status affect the way he saw people.
"He was absolutely a saint, and I don't know how else to put it," Episcopo said. "His heart was just on fire for his activism and it drove everything about him."
It's unclear what caused the plane containing Kyle Henn to crash. The Cirrus is unusual in that it has a large parachute that the pilot can deploy in an emergency. The chute was trailed out behind the plane wreckage.
Horace Williams Airport is owned by UNC-Chapel Hill, which plans to close the airport eventually.
"The airport does have an atypical flight path, so when people are landing, it's different than other airports. It can be difficult for pilots," said Diane Bloom, who has advocated closing Horace Williams.
Staff writers Eric Frederick and Katelyn Ferral contributed to this report.
(E-mail reporter Jay Price at jay.price(at)newsobserver.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
Must credit The News and Observer of Raleigh, N.C.
