A single-engine, four-seat Cirrus SR22 airplane crashed in a soybean field Tuesday morning when trying to land at Lee Airport in Edgewater.
The pilot, a man in his 60s, was unconscious and taken to the University of Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore with head injuries after an unsuccessful landing from Ocean City, N.J., officials said. They declined to identify the pilot by name.
Mark Cole, 16, and several other eyewitnesses were the first on the scene. Cole said they hopped a fence surrounding the field and rushed to pull the pilot from the mangled cockpit.
“We just tried to get him out as fast as possible,” Cole said. “He was not doing good when we got there. We just got him out and tried to stop the bleeding from his head.”
Rescuers responded to the 9:43 a.m. call from 3090 Solomon?s Island Road within six minutes, said Lt. Frank Fennell, a spokesman for the Anne Arundel County Police Department.
The HAZMAT unit along with the U.S. Naval Academy and Annapolis City fire departments responded to the call.
Van Lee, co-owner and manager of Lee Airport, said there have been plane crashes at the airport before, with at least one resulting in death since the airport opened in 1927.
“We practice a pretty safe approach here,” Lee said. “It?s been quite some time since we?ve had an incident.”
He said pilots from other areas sometimes use the airport and misjudge the length of the runway.
The Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board are investigating the crash.
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