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Fishermen witness, respond to plane crash
By Sara Stanglin
The Paris News
Published April 12, 2005
It was no ordinary fishing trip Sunday for Scott Callaway and Scott Manley.
The two Lamar County residents, who were participating in a fishing tournament on Lake of the Pines near Jefferson, became the first on the scene of a deadly plane crash.
Ralph Messersmith, 48; Melody Messersmith, 30; and Candace McNallen, 42, all three of Jacksboro, which is about 60 miles northwest of Fort Worth, died in the crash. Their plane dived into the lake where Callaway and Manley were fishing. Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board officials were trying to determine what caused the crash.
Callaway and Manley said they were enjoying a fun-filled day of fishing, but that changed when they witnessed the plane come tumbling down. They immediately rushed to the scene.
The day had not started off great for the duo. Misadventures had pushed them behind schedule. The entire bass club they were traveling with got lost on the way to the tournament, and the boat they were traveling in got turned around. The pair had just started doing well in the tournament, joking about what else could go wrong when they heard the plane.
“I’ll never forget hearing the plane,” Manley said Monday.
The fishermen said they heard the plane before they saw it, but they knew it sounded low. Seconds later it cleared a point and they could see it skimming the water.
Manley thought what the plane was doing “looked neat,” so he tried to get photos of it with his camera phone. At the time, the plane didn’t look out of control, he said.
Then, it looked to the pair that the plane was headed straight for a bridge.
Suddenly the aircraft gained altitude and made a sharp right turn. It missed the bridge, they said, but clipped its wing on a power line. Both men reported that the wing was sheared completely off.
Callaway and Manley lost sight of the plane. It appeared to have gone down 60 to 90 yards ahead of them, just around the point.
“We started throwing fishing lines, pulling stuff up,” Manley said. “We just had to get there.”
While enroute, Manley dialed 9-1-1 on his cell phone, relaying the message to an emergency operator who asked him if he was actually telling the truth. The hard part was trying to tell emergency services the exact location on the lake.
It took the duo minutes to reach the crash, they said. Searching for pieces of wreckage, they came across a victim.
“I was on the phone with 9-1-1, and Scott (Callaway) was trying as gently as possible to get her head above water,” Manley said. “She had several massive head injuries.”
Another boat came along that had lower sides, and with the help of those fishermen they were able to load the woman into the second boat.
“The second boat helped load her up, and we started CPR,” said Callaway. “It appeared to be futile, but we just had to try.”
The body was taken to shore to meet an ambulance, but Callaway and Scott continued to look for more victims in the water. They also threw marker buoys to identify pieces of wreckage.
The pair could see rescue workers and trucks on shore, but it took a while for emergency personnel with boats to make it to the scene. After rescue workers arrived, Manley was able to hang up with the 9-1-1 operator. He quickly called his parents.
A certified diver from Dallas asked if there was anything he could do to help and was quickly put to work. Because the water was so murky, the diver was unable to locate other victims. Rescue workers brought in aquatic infrared cameras to locate the other victims.
Callaway and Manley were at the scene about 2 1/2 hours, and then they were told to return to shore to give witness statements. At the boat ramp they learned from a radio broadcast that a second body had been found.
“Maybe it was by the grace of God that we were slowed down,” said Manley, referring to the seemingly meaningless events that had slowed the fishermen’s progress earlier that day. “If we had only been five minutes sooner, the plane could have crashed into us or the power lines landed on us.”
Manley was still shaken when he returned home to his parents Sunday night.
“It was quite an event,” Callaway said.
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